G E ¥ T I L I S M 



RELIGION 

PREVIOUS TO 

CHRISTIANITY. 



BY 

Rev. AUgT'J. THfiBAUD, S. J. 

VI 



NEW YORE: 
J). & J. SADLIER & COMPANY, 

31 BARCLAY STREET. 
1876. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by 

D. & J. Sadlier & Company, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



EDWARD O. JENKINS, 
PRINTER AND STERBOTYPEB, 
Ml North William Street, N. Y. 



3 
n 

CONTENTS. 

>- 

*9 

PAGE 

Preface, - - - - - - v.-xv. 



CHAP. 

I. Introductory remarks on the Earth, its position and 
configuration as proofs of design (I.); on the uni- 
formity of nations in primitive times (II.); on the 
obstacles they met against the preservation of their 
traditions (HL)> 1 

II. The supposed Barbarism of primitive man, « 60 

III. Aboriginal religion obscured or destroyed by pantheism 

or polytheism in Hindostan 106 

IV. The primeval religion, and its decline, in Central Asia 

and Africa 177 

Section I. Central Asia Ibid 

Section II. Africa — Egypt and Ethiopia, 202 

V. Religion in Pelasgic Greece 272 

VI. Introduction of Idolatry in Heroic Greece 312 

VII. Hellenic Philosophy as a channel of Tradition 363 

VIII. The Greek and Latin Poets as guardians of truth 393 

IX. Supplementary, on the primitive religion in Western 
Asia: Chaldeea, Phoenicia, Syria, and Arabia; on 
the superiority and influence of Hebrew Monothe- 
ism; on what is known of the religion of Turanian 

■-■ ;'■ Races ; .' 436 

Appendix 1 489 

Appendix II 503 



Index 



513 



PREFACE. 



The great question between the friends of revealed religion 
and its opponents has always been, more or less, a question of 
origin. For it is the special character of our Holy Scriptures 
that every thing in them is precise, and asserted in clear terms. 
In the boldest flights of poetry our inspired prophets never 
contradict for an instant the positive statements of our sacred 
annalists and historians. In this the'authors of the Bible differ 
essentially from all other ancient writers on cosmogony and 
the origin of mankind. Hence, in conformity with their 
narrative, man cannot be supposed to have appeared on earth 
millions of years ago ; and thus is found an occasion of attack. 

The chronology of Holy Writ is, it is true, to a certain de- 
gree, elastic. The Church has never adopted any system on 
the subject ; and her children are free to place the first appear- 
ance of man in creation, at any period they choose consistent 
with any one of the various authorized versions of Scripture ; 
and if there is any question fairly raised between reverent and 
orthodox exegetists on the sacred text, any one is at liberty to 
adopt the system which refers to a higher antiquity the moment 
of inception in the history of man. It is, morever, understood 
by all that what precedes this solemn moment remains in Holy 
Writ without real chronology, and, consistently with orthodoxy, 
any length of time can be assigned to the formation of the 
globe itself and to the successive creative acts related in the 
first twenty-five verses of the first chapter of Genesis. 

But it is clear that the period which has elapsed since the ap- 
pearance of man cannot be of an indefinite duration. Conse- 

(v) 



VI 



PEEFACE. 



quently the opponents of revelation have always tried to give 
him an antiquity which cannot he reconciled with the state- 
ments of the Bihlc. Already in the time of Origen — the third 
century of our era — Celsus " produced from history, other than 
that of the divine record, those passages which bear upon the 
claims to great antiquity put forth by many nations, as the 
Athenians, and Egyptians, and Arcadians, and Phrygians, who 
assert that certain individuals have existed among them who 
sprang from the earth, and who adduce proofs of these asser- 
tions; and he said that: 'The Jews, leading a gro veiling life 
in some corner of Palestine, and being a wholly uneducated 
people, not having heard that these matters had been committed 
to verse long before by Hesiod and innumerable other inspired 
men, wove together some* most incredible and insipid stories, 
etc.'" (Adversus Celsmn, Lib. IY., cap. xxxvi.) Edition of 
A ute-iSTicene Fathers. 

From the time of Celsus down to our own, therefore, this 
has been a standing objection against the revealed "Word of God. 
And all know the extraordinary efforts made last century to 
prove by the records of India, Egypt, Greece, and many other 
ancient nations, that man must claim an antiquity of hundreds 
of thousands of years. But all those labors of erudition and 
criticism have been reduced to naught, in our days, by the al- 
most precise dates assigned by modern critics to the real origin 
of all nations. There are only a few Egyptologists who dare 
yet to believe in some of those fabulous stories.* The fact is, 

* Among recent writers on the subject, Sir John Lubbock, in his " Pre- 
historic Times," is one of the most notorious. In his disappointing 
chapter on the " antiquity of man " — disappointing, because treating 
chiefly of the " antiquity of the globe " according to geologists — he states 
several facts to which he gives a meaning of his own, when many others 
could as well be suggested. The chief one regards the excavations made 
near the base of the huge statue of Rameses II., at Memphis. It seems 
that Mr. Horner found a "piece of pottery" at the depth of thirty-nino 
feet, and Sir John Lubbock forthwith concludes that man existed in 



PEEFACE. 



Vll 



that neither in the numerous most ancient records of Hindo- 
stan, nor on the monuments of Egypt, nor anywhere else, can 
there be found any positive proof of such extraordinary an- 
tiquity, for the simple reason that all Southern and Eastern 
nations paid no regard whatever to chronology ; and nothing, 
either in their writings or on their monuments, can indicate 
positively the succession of time. All that modern antiquarians 
have to do is to establish a relative antiquity among them, 
without being able to assign a starting-point. Thus the wise 
among modern scientists have altogether abandoned the idea of 
looking into those records for what cannot be found there. The 
truth is, as we have already observed : The Bible is the only 
book of real antiquity which is precise, and deals in positive 
assertions. And this circumstance, whilst it affords, in fact, a 
great presumption in favor of its truth, supplies enemies with 
a strong motive for assailing it. 

The proceedings, therefore, of those who wish to distinguish 
themselves by endeavoring to place revelation in antagonism to 
science, have taken an altogether new direction. They have, 
we may say, abandoned history and the study of the oldest ex- 
isting monuments, which are, in fact, in open opposition to their 
theories, and they think they will find in natural science the 
antagonism they are in search of. Hence the celebrated theory 
of " evolution." They imagine they can prove, not only for 
other organized beings — which might be granted them — but 
even for man, what seems to be the fact for inorganic matter, 
chiefly for the frame-work of our globe : a gradual develop- 

Egypt 13,000 years ago. But suppose that, before erecting such an im- 
mense colossus, the Egyptians dug clown forty feet, to find a sure founda- 
tion below the alluvium — builders of astronomical observatories go some 
times as deep to secure their telescopes against exterior motion — in such 
case can we not suggest that some unlucky workman may have let fall 
there a "piece of pottery," the innocent cause of so many speculations? 
Should this suggestion not be admissible in the present case, many others 
can be offered. 



Vlll 



PREFACE. 



ment ; in this case an evolution from aerial vapor to the solid 
and diversified crust of our dwelling. But we are sure they 
cannot do so for man. 

First, Science is not yet on their side altogether, with re- 
spect to the origin and essential nature of species; and the 
number of men learned in natural history who have not been 
convinced by all the facts accumulated by their chief leader, 
Mr. Darwin, is yet a stumbling-block to the universal acceptance 
of the system. "We have no fear that further discoveries wi 1 
demonstrate the soundness of their views. We think, on the 
contrary, that as Lamark, who first broached the theory on a 
large scale, remained finally without almost any followers, so 
likewise those who now have revived his enterprise, will see 
behind them a scanty number of fervent disciples, when the 
ardor always natural to a new system ghall have cooled. 

We must, however, leave the discussion of the subject to 
special writers, who have made these studies the object of their 
life. Some. have already appeared worthy of respect. Others 
will follow, to bring on the usual triumph of truth. 

Meanwhile, in our opinion, the historical treatment of the 
subject ought not to be discarded. It ought, on the contrary, 
to be more insisted upon than ever ; for human history cannot 
contradict natural science, and what it obliges us to accept, has 
to be accepted. It is true, the gentlemen who give to man a 
really fabulous antiquity altogether unacceptable to Christians, 
imagine they can place themselves in a position of safety with 
respect to the direct testimony of history, by the assertion that 
man could not have annals nor monuments Avhen he was yet 
unconscious. For, in their opinion, the natural passage by evo- 
lution of the ancestors of man from the original " protoplasm " 
to the state of a well-developed " ape," must have required 
millions of years of complete unconsciousness ; and how many- 
ages more must have been necessary for a " Simian anthropoid " 
to acquire the art of sharpening flint into an arrow, and a stick 



PREFACE. 



IX 



of hard wood into a spear, not to mention the farther greater 
progress supposed by the invention of a covering of leaves for 
their nudity ? During all this time, of course, the ancestors of 
man were absolutely " unconscious." And, finally, the com- 
mencement of " records," rude at first and of the simples* 
kind — first proof of real " consciousness " — supposes another 
long series of years. This we find substantially in an article 
of the North American Review, for October, 1873. The con- 
clusion is that historical times, the only ones which we can dis- 
cuss, have been preceded by long, long ages which give alto- 
gether the lie to the Bible of Jews and Christians. 

This, of course, supposes that the whole system of evolution 
has been proved without fear of contradiction. This will 
scarcely be maintained by even the most fervent " scientists." 
And, what is more, we will venture to assert that such a dem- 
onstration never will be forthcoming. But we will not insist 
on this. Our purport is very different — we say : We assert, 
that if things had taken place as the evolutionists assure us they 
have, the first records of mankind would be those of rude people 
just emerging from barbarism. In point of art and culture, in 
point of ideas and' language, chiefly in point of religion, we 
should find in their social state the most rude elements of a "child- 
ish" and " growing " soul ; we should be able to trace the steps by 
which, from the first notions of a coarse religious system, they 
would have arrived at the point of inventing God and all His 
attributes. This would have been in the sense of evolutionists 
a mere subjective theory perfectly independent of any objective 
Divine Essence, and having nothing in common with the cer- 
tain belief that the reason of man can know God and demon- 
strate to himself His existence. They assert it has been so, and 
that historical man began everywhere by being a barbarian. 
Here we join issue with them, and one of the great purports 
of this volume will be, to establish solidly the fact, that man 
appeared first in a state of civilization, possessed of noble ideas 



X 



PEEFACE. 



as to his own origin, the Creator, One Supreme God, ruling the 
universe, etc. We intend to prove historically that he invented 
none of the great religious and moral truths by the process 
mentioned abbve ; but that these came to him from heaven. 
¥e will endeavor to show the first men everywhere monothe- 
ists, generally pure in their morals, dignified in their bearing, 
and cultivated in their intellect. Should this be well and 
firmly established, the whole monstrous system of man's evolu- 
tion falls to the ground. Still more will this be the case if it 
be proved, besides, that the supposed " continuous progress," 
which is the main-stay of their theory, is a dream, a non-entity ; 
that on the contrary man everywhere progressed in the wrong 
direction, going from monotheism to pantheism, from this to 
idolatry, and from this last to "individualism " in religion ; that 
this seems to be the law which has governed mankind until the 
Redeemer happened to bring back man to truth, and to found" 
at last a true and strict religious society, not confined to one 
nation like Judaism, but universal. 

Progress is a fine and catching word, but its greatest admirers 
are themselves bound to confess that, historically, it has been 
distinguished by many an overthrow ; the edifice in process of 
construction has often crumbled into ruins, and the savage 
Goth has spurned with his foot the graciously-moulded Grecian 
statue, the last and perfect expression of art. No sensible man 
can admit a " continuous progress " in history. Yet is it of the 
nature of evolution to be " continuous," since history cannot 
contradict natmal science. If evolution is once interrupted, it 
ceases entirely to be, and must start afresh. But we intend to 
go much farther than this, and to prove our previous assertion : 
that nations, after having reached a certain point, always " pro- 
gress backward," and lose gradually the steps in advance they 
had made. This at least seems to be the historical law for the 
times anterior to Christianity. 

As we treat chiefly the religious question, this will appear 



« 



PREFACE. 



xi 



very distinctly, we hope, in these pages, and independently of x 
the antagonism sensible men always feel for system-mongers. 
The matter we treat of has a peculiar interest of its own, which 
of itself is calculated to attract the serious attention of the 
reader. 

There is an obvious want even in the actual forward state of 
historical studies of a simple, easily understood, concrete view 
of the origin of the false religions ivhich have afflicted man- 
kind. Many notions on the subject are afloat, but they are 
vague, shifting, and unsatisfactory. A thorough investigation 
of this question, it is true, would require immense develop- 
ments ; and we intend to devote to it only a few pages. But 
at least a comprehensive compendium will not be worthless, if 
it is clear and firmly grounded. 

Gentilism, in fact, has remained until our days in a state of 
hopeless confusion ; and the author of " Gentile and Jew " has 
not in the least rendered the subject clearer. We have not 
the presumption to lay claim to more erudition than is con- 
tained in the above-mentioned work, nor even to as much. But 
we complain that the reader rises from its perusal not one whit 
more enlightened on the subject of the origin and growth of 
the whole delusion than when he commenced it. Now we 
think that something at least can be said on a subject at once 
so instructive and so interesting. And it is time to say it. 
For this, we will call to our help what we know of antiquity ; 
and by its aid alone endeavor to explain the enigma of the 
origin of error. On our way we may investigate some celebrated 
myths on which we think a flood of light has been thrown by 
late investigations. The greater number of them, however, 
are quite without any such illmnination, and thus we leave them 
in their obscurity. 

The valuable discoveries lately made in the antiquities of In- 
dia, Bactriana, Egypt, and Greece, render possible such a short 
work as we undertake. It would have been little more than 



Xll 



PKEFACE. 



theoretical some fifty years ago. By these discoveries the range 
of Gentilisin has been greatly extended. Formerly, scarcely 
anything was understood by the word but what came to us from 
Greece and Rome. Now the whole Gentile world, chiefly the 
central part of it, Hindostan and Egypt, has to be included ; 
and as in this study each part helps the whole, the actual 
knowledge we have of India and Central Asia throws a flood 
of light on the mythology of Egypt and Greece. Many things, 
in fact, which could not be known to the Greeks of the age of 
Pericles, which were perfectly unknown to the Romans, which 
were scarcely and dimly seen fifty years ago, are now clear and 
palpable ; and the sure derivation of truth and error from the 
east and north towards the west and the south must be now con- 
sidered as a fact above possible contradiction. 

When the antiquities of Emope alone were known, or, rather, 
when people thought they knew them, many important points 
remained almost completely in the dark. One of these among 
others deserves, so early as this, a rapid mention. The starting- 
point of humanity from light and culture, and not from dark- 
ness and savagery, could scarcely be explained satisfactorily, be- 
cause of the long ages dining which our European ancestors 
had been plunged in comparative barbarism, or, at least, in what 
was thought to be such. The clear-speaking sacred books of 
India have removed in great part the difficulty, and the result 
has been a reflected light on the west, enabling us to appreciate 
much better the "heroic ages" of Hellas. Even tne numer- 
ous tribes of barbarians of the north, who destroyed the Roman 
power, could not have been so rude in their beginnings, as when 
they swarmed into Europe ; for their languages, as well as many 
traditions preserved among them, show manifestly that they 
came originally from a centre of light, and that the condition 
in which they were when they invaded Gaul, Italy, and Greece 
was not their primitive state, but had been gradually produced 
by that historical law, to which we have alluded, by which na- 



PREFACE. 



Xlll 



tions left to themselves naturally degenerate and fall into gross 
superstition and degraded customs. 

Hence, we hope to be able to give a completely different turn 
to the rnyth of Prometheus, who was supposed to have invented, 
to the profit of mankind, the art of speech — nay, reason and 
memory, as well as the use of fire, and of more comfortable 
dwellings than eaves and holes underneath the ground. .zEschy- 
lus, we shall see, had no real conception of the great truths con- 
cealed under the noble allegory which he produced so splendidly 
on the Grecian stage ; and that poet was probably the cause of 
the common error of many subsequent authors, who represented 
man as at first feeding on acorns and addicted to all the instincts 
of the brute. We never find such myths in the oldest poems 
or compositions of the Far Orient. There, on the contrary, it 
is always the reign of the gods on earth, the happy life of 
JSishis, of patriarchs, of men nourished intellectually by the 
sublime effusions of the noblest upanishads, and, physically, by 
the luscious and abundant fruits of a teeming and friendly earth, 
We will try to find out which of the two, the East or the West, 
is more likely to have spoken the truth. This is the problem 
in its simplicity. 

Those who will condescend to read this work ought not, how- 
ever, to expect a complete demonstration as strict as that of a 
mathematical theorem. Many reasons confined us within nar- 
row limits ; and historical deductions are not susceptible of the 
dogmatism leading to the absolute and final Q. E. D. We hope, 
however, to establish that the balance of probability is found 
overwhelmingly on the side herein advocated ; and that the 
contraiy position may be considered as decidedly untenable. It 
will be for Christians merely a confirmation of what revealed 
truth says with much more authority and innate power. 

A last remark of consequence, in conclusion, is that the sub- 
ject, most important and interesting in itself, possesses besides 
this advantage, that it is the natural prelude to considerations , 



XIV 



PEEFACE. 



of a far higher import, In studying the religious aspect of the 
world, during several thousand year#of Gentilism, we are neces- 
sarily attracted by the grand spectacle offered to our view when, 
at the end, the decomposition of all previous religious principles 
took place, to make room for another pouring out of divine 
effulgence, to last, this time, forever ; when the loss of those 
truths first communicated by heaven to mankind was amply 
compensated hy a far higher and nobler revelation ; and when, 
at the very moment of almost complete darkness, light broke 
out afresh more brilliantly than ever, not to be obscured any 
more, because the torch was intrusted to the hands of an infal- 
lible guide. 

The bright form of the Catholic Church arises on a sudden 
in the midst of universal darkness; and the infinite boon con- 
ferred on man by the Divine Eedeemer is appreciated with a ten- 
fold delight, because it comes unexpectedly after so many ages 
of doubt and error. Gentilism becomes, thus, the natural in- 
troduction to the study of the new, complete, final revelation 
which followed it. Eeligion, invested henceforth with the per- 
manent characters of universality, perpetuity, and holiness, takes 
from the start the guidance of the world, never to lose hold of 
the reins, in spite of all obstacles and of millions of enemies. 

"Where is the pen that can adequately describe that sublime 
struggle, which has now lasted more than eighteen centuries ? 
"What power of description is equal to such a theme ? Where 
is that master of language who shall narrate in fit terms the 
gradual spread of heaveuly truth to the utmost bounds of the 
earth — embracing all nations, all races, all tribes — and making 
one family of mankind ; victories without number over a pow- 
erful and hostile world ; and Christian holiness subduing the 
passions of men, and establishing on earth the peaceful reign 
of virtue ? 

The subject is so vast and of so exalted a nature, as to inspire 
with fear the heart of any one who shordd make the bold at- 



PREFACE. XV 

tempt. Be ours the more modest task of describing the times 
which preceded Christianity. There was no Church then ; at 
least, no universal Church claiming the love and homage of all 
mankind ; it was only the conflict of unorganized truth with all 
the passions of man and all the fury of hell. The result was 
unavoidable : Truth could not stand ; Error and Vice were des- 
tined to conquer. Not so now, thank God ! The "World has 
now the Church to contend against, and the Church is stronger 
than the "World. 



GENTILISM. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON THE EARTH, ITS POSITION AND CONFIGURA- 
TION AS PROOFS OF DESIGN (I) — ON THE UNIFORMITY OF NATIONS IN 
PRIMITIVE TIMES (II)— ON THE OBSTACLES THEY MET TO THE PRE- 
SERVATION OF THEIR TRADITIONS (III). 

Domini est Terra et pleniludo ejus.— Ps. xxiii. 

What can be the object of our globe as it is fashioned % How 
is it adapted to human society ? Was it made originally for one 
universal race, having but one religion — or the reverse ? How 
did the actual obstacles to the primitive plan originate ? What 
must have been, therefore, the first state of society and religion 
on its surface ? And, finally, how does revelation agree with rea- 
son and history on the subject? These are the momentous 
questions we propose to ourselves on the very threshold of our 
investigations. We do not intend to treat them ex prqfesso in 
this first chapter. But in it we shall confine ourselves to throw- 
ing out in broad outline, by way of assertion, the several propo- 
sitions which the remainder of the work will be devoted to 
establishing. The rest of the work will afterwards fill up and 
corroborate what we have sketched in advance, and make it, we 
hope, clear and evident. 

Our chief object is to show that man really came from heaven, 
and did not receive his being from the development of an infe 
rior species. And a few preparatory observations will not be 
misplaced on the relations which God established originally be- 
tween Himself and the inhabitants of our globe, after the fall, 

(1) 



GENTELISM. 



to prepare them for the fulness of redemption and the bonds 
of a higher uniformity. 

Tlie configuration of the globe, the unity of the human race, 
the same language for all, the same primitive traditions given 
to all, vrould seem to indicate that the intention of Providence 
«vas to keep them united, and chiefly under the control of the 
same worship. This was to be the form of universality in the 
patriarchal period, or rather until the Saviour should appear 
and call all mankind to Himself — cum exultatus fuero, omnia 
traham ad meipmm. 

This plan of God was frustrated at the dispersion of nations. 
Henceforth, we say, the ocean, the large rivers, the chains of 
high mountains, and the deserts spread here and there over the 
globe, became obstacles to intercourse, owing to the social 
breaking up which then took place. And thus, the configura- 
tion of the globe, instead of facilitating universal communica- 
tion among men, was turned into a hindrance, or rather into an 
ahnost insurmountable barrier. The primitive language was 
replaced by a large number of idioms, many of which had 
scarcely any roots in common. To the unity of origin and of 
species succeeded the diversity of races, a source of untold di- 
vision. Finally, the primitive traditions were soon obscured, 
and were, at length, disfigured by the grotesque mythologies 
and absurd philosophies which then became prevalent to such 
an extent, that only the faintest traces of them could be de- 
tected in the mass of gross inventions which had buried them 
out of sight, and those only here and there. Thus, what we 
may call Patriarchal Catholicity, disappeared ; chiefly owing 
to a complete want of a central authority, for direction and 
counsel even, which the existence of the Synagogue among the 
Jews was not intended to furnish. Such are our preliminary 
assertions. 

But we must go a little more into detail before we advance 
beyond our preparatory observations. 



INTEODUCTOEY. 



3 



I. 

And first, What does our globe itself tell as of its own con- 
formation, and how does the revealed Word of God explain its 
object ? 

" There are men of our generation," says a sagacious writer 
in the Dublin -Review (July, 1873, page 67), "for whom 
this world is only one of innumerable planets, careering through 
space without any particular object ;* while its inhabitants are, 
more or less, intelligent animals, who know neither whence they 
come nor whither they are going." 

In spite of all the discoveries in modern science, it may be 
said, that the number of such men as these increases every day ; 
and we are fast going back to the period anterior to Christian- 
ity, when the most important problems of human destiny, often 
agitated by philosophers, had not yet reached, the first rational 
solution. Our globe is now much better known physically ; 
yet the moral ignorance of some learned men is as great as ever, 
with respect both to man himself and to his dwelling religiously 
considered. It is true, this is considered by them as out of the 
pale of science, but is it so really ? 

Revelation, we assert, has long ago solved even the physical 
problem most satisfactorily to human reason, as well as to hu- 
man conscience, and given us facts which true science has noth- 
ing to do but to register. But its light is precisely the guide 
which many refuse to admit. Unable to quench it, they re- 
move it from the sphere of their vision ; and thus, groping in 
the dark, they pretend that the utter obscurity of the divine 
splendor is the most sure means of finding their lost way. We 
assert that the revealed word of God was not certainly given to 
teach us science ; but that not a single phrase of it, rightly un- 
derstood, can be opposed to true science, and that there is much 
in it which has anticipated science. 



4 



GENTILISM. 



Many ardent investigators of human knowledge in our days 
imagine that, because revealed truth does not satisfy an idle 
curiosity, and contents itself chiefly -with giving us the informa- 
tion required for the fulfilment of our eternal destiny, no ray 
of light is thrown by it on external creation ; and that, what- 
ever it says of the origin of our dwelling, of its object in the 
mind of God, and of the ways of Providence in its very his- 
tory, is an absurd legend, worthy only of affording amusement 
to children in the nursery. 

Yet, as we shall presently see, the solution it gives to the 
physical problem even of this earth, is the only one that can 
satisfy rational beings ; and any one who does away with it, or 
refuses to take an account of it, has nothing to fall upon but 
crude conjectures ending in materialism or scepticism. Hence 
all the absurd cosmogonies which have ever been imagined, 
from the tune of the first Hindoos or Greeks to our own. At a 
period of time before any other writings now extant, Holy 
Scripture gave to man the noblest and justest idea of the im- 
mensity of creation, and of the position of the earth in the phys- 
ical heavens ; and modern astronomers cannot expect, by all 
their labor and discoveries, to do more in noticing the gen- 
eral aspect of the whole exterior creation than comment on the 
sublime imagery of Job, who wrote in the time of Moses, if not 
before. 

For whatever may have been the individual thoughts of the 
true prophets of God, whatever sense they may have personally 
attached to the words they uttered, the words themselves had a 
deep meaning, intended surely by the Divine Eevealer to illu- 
mine the future discoverers of His laws, and show them that 
whatever they might discover He had created. Happy they, 
should they pay attention to it ! Hence when Moses repre- 
sented the Almighty creating light by His great fiat, before he 
had launched into space the bright orb of the sun, he may 
have continued to imagine that it was the sun itself which emit- 



HSTTRODTTCTOEY. 



5 



ted the effulgent rays of light ; but He had used an expres- 
sion on which men might long afterwards ponder, and which 
God alone could at the time utter ; He had asserted the crea- 
tion, at the beginning, of the imponderable ether from which 
light, and heat, and electricity must come. 

Of the same nature are the astounding questions proposed by 
the Almighty to Job, (Ch. xxxviii., 19, 24) : " Where is the 
place where light dwelleth, where is that of darkness ?."... 
By what way is light spread, and heat distributed upon the 
earth ?" Shoidd the prophet of the land of Hus have dared to 
open his lips when God spoke, he might have found the answer 
easy, and replied : " Light dwelleth in the sun and stars, and 
darkness wherever they do not shine. Light is spread by that 
dazzling globe, and from its fiery furnace heat is distributed 
upon the earth." But God would have repeated what He told 
him at the beginning of this chapter (v. 2) : " Who is this man 
that wrappeth up sentences in unskilful words ?" and Job, no 
doubt, did not make the reply previously supposed, as he knew 
his own ignorance in the presence of Eternal Truth ; and he 
acknowledged humbly that what appeared to him easy of an- 
swer was in fact unknown to him, since God said so ; and that, 
in spite of the testimony of his eyes, light and heat might come 
from another source than the sun and stars. 

After light itself, the innumerable bodies destined to set it 
in motion through space, are described in Holy Scripture with 
such a splendor of expression that never, either before or after, 
has the ear of man heard such glowing and eloquent words on 
so august a subject. Compare with it the low and ridiculous 
ideas all the Greek physical philosophers, with the exception, 
perhaps, of Pythagoras, had of the visible heavens ; remember 
that one of the boldest among them thought he would astonish 
his hearers by asserting that the sun was as large as Pelopon- 
nesus, and read Job afterwards. The only license we shall 
allow ourselves, will be to place in a new juxtaposition the 



GENTILISM. 



various verses of the sublime 38th Chapter, which relate to the 
great subject under consideration. " Who can declare the order 
of the heavens, and who can make the harmony of heaven 
sleep ? (by interrupting it)." " Tell me, if thou knowest all 
things : where does light dwell, and where is the place of dark- 
ness \ That thou may'st bring everything to its own bounds, 
and understand the paths of the dwelling thereof." How 
could the immensity of creation be better expressed than in 
making it co-extensive with light itself? 

Job had already said of God (Ch. ix., v. 8): "lie .alone 
spreadeth out the heavens, and walketh upon the waves of the 
sea." "He made Arcturus, and Orion, and the Dyades, and 
the constellations of the far south" — unvisible to us and to 
Job. " He doeth things great, and incomprehensible, and won- 
derful, of which there is no number." But God with a far greater 
majesty, exclaims (Ch. xxxviii., v. 31) : " Shalt thou be able to 
join together those shining stars, the Pleiades?" — by reducing 
to naught the space between them — " and canst thou stop the 
turning about of Arcturus ?" " Where wast thou when the 
stars praised Me on the morning of creation, and all the sons of 
God sang for joy ?" " Didst thou even since thy birth, com- 
mand the morning, and show the dawning of the day its place ?" 
" Canst thou bring forth the day star in its time, and make the 
evening star to rise upon the children of the earth ?" " Dost 
thou know the order of heaven, and canst thou set down the 
reason thereof on the earth ?" 

In vain, we think, would all the literature of Rome and 
Greece, of the Far Orient and mysterious Egypt, be searched for 
a single' phrase containing at the same time as much truth and 
as much poetiy. 

Alexander von Humboldt was struck by it ; and in his Cosmos, 
(vol. 2, p. 412, Bohn's edit.) he says (The underlines are ours) : 
" It is a characteristic of the poetry of the Hebrews, that as a 
reflex of monotheism, it always embraces the universe in its 



INTKODUCTOEY. 



7 



unity, comprising both terrestrial life and the luminous realms 
of space. The Hebrew poet does not depict nature as a self- 
dependent object, glorious in its individual beauty, but always 
as in relation and subjection to a higher spiritual power. Nature 
is to him a work of creation and order, the living expression of 
the omnipresence of the Divinity in the visible world. Hence, 
from the very nature of Hebrew lyrical poetry it is grand and 

solemn Devoted to the pure contemplation of the Deity, 

it remains clear and simple in the midst of the most figurative 
forms of expression, delighting in comparisons which recur 
with almost rythmical regularity." 

Commenting, page 413, on the Psalm 104, which he quotes 
at length, Humboldt remarks: "We are astonished to find 
in a Jyrical poem of such a limited compass, the whole uni- 
verse — the heavens and the earth — sketched with a few bold 
touches." 

" Similar views of the cosmos occur repeatedly in the Psalms, 
and more fully perhaps in ,the 37th (38th?) Chap, of the Book 
of Job. The meteorological processes which take place in the 
atmosphere, the formation and solution of vapor, the play of 
its colors, the generation of hail, and the voice of the rolling 
thunder are described with individualizing accuracy ; and many 
questions are propounded which we, in the present state of our 
physical knowledge, may, indeed, be able to express under more 
scientific definitions, but scarcely to answer satisfactorily." 

The " more scientific definitions " may pass for what they are 
worth ; a slightly greater knowledge often obliges our " scien- 
tists " to change altogether their " definitions ;" but the fact 
deserves to be recorded here : Humboldt himself acknowledges 
that the questions propounded in the 38th Chapter of Job, " can 
scarcely be answered satisfactorily," with all our modern knowl- 
edge. 

Yet, as we have before observed, the more science advances, 
the more the accuracy, even of expression of these scientific 



s 



gj:n tilism. 



hintings of Holy Scripture, shows that, often at least, the words 
themselves could not come hut from the lips of God. 

The same must he asserted of what the Book of Joh says of 
our globe, which is the proper subject of this chapter, and of 
which we must now begin to treat. 

Who can read without astonishment and admiration the 7th 
verse of Chap, xxvi : " He "—God—" stretcheth the north "— 
the northern constellations — " over the empty space, and hang- 
eth the earth upon nothing." There we have the position of 
our globe in the physical heavens, accurately described in the 
oldest book that remains to us of all those ever written by 
man, unless, as some pretend, the first Vedas are more ancient. 

Here, as usual, according to Humboldt, "Hebrew poetry 
embraces the universe in its unity, comprising loth terrestrial 
life and the luminous realms of space." To understand the 
phrase, the reader must remember that he stands, as Job stood, 
on some point of the northern hemisphere ; and, looking at 
night on the starry firmament, he sees "the North" — the 
boreal constellations — "stretched over the empty space," and 
he knows, as Job knew already, since God had revealed it to 
him, that "the earth is hung tipon nothing." 

Compare with this, we repeat, what all the Greek philoso- 
phers have ever said of the cosmos. And all the Greek philoso- 
phers, without exception, flourished long after the author of 
the Book of Job." 

Thns the oft-repeated objection disappears, that Science 
alone discovers the greatness of the physical world, and knows 

* We speak of philosophers and physicists, not of the Latin and Greek 
poets, who have preserved in their verse some precious fragments of the 
primitive revelation. Our readers will remember here the line of Ovid 
(Lib. 1, Metam.), » 

" Ncc circumfuso pendebat in aere tellus 
Ponderibus librata swis" 

It lo iks almost as a literal translation of the passnge of Job just quoted. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



9 



how to enlarge the ideas of man. The Author alone of that 
immensity knows perfectly His secrets, and He had conde- 
scended to reveal something of it to man more than thirty 
centuries ago — long before Science, as it is called, was born. 
Yet puny man imagines that, because he sees a little more 
than his immediate ancestors, he has no thanks to give to the 
Creator of all things. 3STay, he claims to be himself ahnost the 
very demiurgos, since, in his opinion, a discoverer can be called 
an inventor, nay, a creator. 

The strong light which the 7th verse of Chapter xxvi. throws 
so suddenly on the isolation of our globe in space, is curiously 
singled out and rendered more vivid by the apparent meta- 
phoric obscurity of the Chapter xxxviii., as a bright ray becomes 
more dazzling in the black emptiness of the camera obscura. 
" Where wast though when I laid the foundations of the earth ? 
Tell me if thou hast understanding % Who hath laid the meas- 
ures thereof, if thou knowest % or who hath stretched the line 
upon it % Upon what are its bases grounded f Or who laid 
the corner-stone thereof ?" Archbishop Kenrick, whose trans- 
lation we adopt, remarks on the words we have underlined, 
that " the position of the earth in space, unsupported, is clearly 
intimated." ' The whole passage is metaphoric, and under 
material images depicts the mighty operations of the great 
creative mind. He alone knows the exact measure of our 
globe which he. has made, and he has stretched over its sur- 
face the curved lines which give it its form. By requiring of 
Job to tell " upon what its bases are grounded," He wanted 
him evidently to answer, " Uppn nothing." And the expres- 
sion of the Septuagint version deserves to be here mentioned 
as the word translated in the Vulgate by " bases " is in Greek 
" Kpt/coi," namely, rings or circles. Nothing is more remark- 
able than this expression, since it is precisely the spherical 
shape of the earth, the whole globular circumference press- 
ing upon the attracting centre — which can explain how it 



10 



GENTILISM. 



can "hang upon nothing." Physicists will easily understand 
that even if our globe was the only one created, and if it 
was not attracted by other spheres, but acted upon only by its 
own forces, the earth would for ever stand immovable in space, 
yet it would be and remain spherical through gravitation, and 
owing to the force of cohesion which that very form sup- 
poses and creates. Why modern interpreters have translated 
the Hebrew word here by " bases," when the Septuagint 
gave it the meaning of "circles" or "rings," we cannot say. 
But the Jewish translators, who wrote that version three hun- 
dred years before Christ, thought themselves right in their in- 
terpretation. And the Church has, to a certain degree, con- 
secrated this particular version of the Bible, which all the Greek 
Fathers have followed. 

"We hope that our readers have drawn from what precedes 
the conclusion, that God has not left altogether to " Science" 
the task of instructing us on the immensity of creation, on 
the mysterious nature of light, on the place and form of our 
dwelling — the small globe where we accomplish our mortal 
destinies. From what precedes we can also conclude that the 
Creator takes a particular care of this insignificant " spheroid," 
without, however, neglecting, the rest of His creation. What- 
ever He may have done for the beings who, perhaps, inhabit 
other planets has little or nothing to do with our eternal wel- 
fare, and consequently of this His revelation has not spoken. 
But how rich and abundant is the divine communication made 
to us of all the details which may interest us with regard to the 
precise little spot where we " rnove and have our being !" Let 
us see : First, we can say but a word of that atmosphere where 
the "waters which are above the firmament," as Moses describes 
it, follow constantly the marvellous guidance of laws until now 
almost perfectly unknown. AVe will merely repeat the few 
words of Job : " Hast thou entered into the storehouses of the 
snow, or hast thou beheld the treasures of the hail V . . . . 



INTRODUCTORY. 



11 



" Who gave a course to violent showers, or a way for noisy 
thunder ;• that it should rain on the earth, without man, in the 
wilderness, where no mortal dwelleth ; that it should till the 
desert and desolate land, and should bring forth green grass ? 
Who is the father of rain ? Or who begat the drops of dew ? 
Out of whose womb came the ice % And the frost from heaven 
who hath gendered it ? The waters are hardened like a stone, 
and the surface of the deep is congealed " (Job, Oh. xxxviii). 

This is the passage, with others of similar import, which 
filled with admiration Humboldt himself ; who confessed that 
many of these questions " cau scarcely be answered " in the 
actual state of our knowledge. Let us hope that the efforts 
now made on this Continent of North America by the " Signal 
Bureau," will ultimately render less problematical the various 
theories invented until our time by so many explorers and 
meteorologists, to explain the innumerable processes of atmos- 
pheric variations. 

But two-thirds of our globe are covered with " the waters 
that are under heaven," and which were from the beginning, 
" gathered together into one place ;" and this " gathering toge- 
ther of the waters God called the seas." (Gen., Ch. 1.) This 
grand feature of our dwelling calls for a particular attention. 

Whatever may have been the various theories by which cos-, 
mologists have tried to explain the formation of our globe, and 
the first functions of the immense atmosphere which from the 
beginning enveloped it, the general opinion of the greatest phi- 
losophers, beginning with Thales, has been conformable to the 
inspired text of the Christian Scriptures. The earth, after its 
first condensation, is supposed by nearly all the great thinkers 
to have been surrounded by a vast envelope of aqueous vapors, 
a part of which was ultimately condensed to form our ocean and 
the rivers it receives, the other part remaining suspended in 
the air and ^indistinguishable from it. This primitive process 
of " the separation of the waters " must have been one of the 



12 



GENTTLISM. 



grandest phenomena accompanying the birth of our globe. The 
Book of Genesis devotes two or three lines to it, with the simpli- 
city of an ordinary chronicle. And this very way of treating 
such a stupendous subject is to every thinking man a suffi- 
cient proof that God himself dictated the narrative. What 
was, for His power, the pouring down of the liquid sea from 
the ocean of the air ? Exactly what is for man the cooling of a 
few drops of water into a glass receiver from the heated coils 
of a cubic foot alambic. A simple word or two expresses suf- 
ficiently the wonderful fact. 

But to please all minds, the splendor of inspired poetry was 
to be thrown over the same creative act ; and, in his terrible 
affliction, the prophet of the land of IIus was to hear from the 
lips of God, and to preserve for all time to come the following 
words : 

(Chap, xxxviii., v. 8, and foil.) : " Who shut up the sea with 
doors, when it brake forth as issuing out of the womb ?" — 
namely, from the atmosphere — " When I made a cloud the gar- 
ment thereof, and wrapped it in a mist as in swaddling bands ? 
I set my bounds around it, and made it bars and doors ; and I 
said : Hitherto thou shalt come, and thou shalt go no further ; 
and here thou shalt break thy swelling waves." 

The ocean here is individualized. It is a new-born infant. It 
issues forth from the womb of the all-surrounding atmosphere. 
It breaks forth having a cloud for its garment, and a mist in- 
stead of swaddling bands. Could the physical process be 
better expressed, and a more gracious image represent more 
truthfully the passage of invisible vapor to licpiid through the 
intervening state of cloud or mist ? Often human poets have 
expressed physical truths under graceful imagery. But how 
often have they not failed either in the metaphorical expression 
or in the exact statement of the truth ? Here both M^ere ad- 
mirably rendered, many ages before Lavoisier, by the invention 
of his gas-receiving tub, was the first to render the process visible 



INTEODUCTORY. 13 

to the eye of man ; for it is here the same phenomenon an a 
scale commensurate with the globe. 

After all this magnificence of language, a yet greater height 
of sublimity is reached by the last words, which soar to the 
utmost height possible to human language : " I set My bounds 
around it, and made it bars and doors ; and I said : Hitherto 
thou shalt come, and thou shalt go no further, and here thou 
shalt break thy swelling waves." 

And it is books containing such descriptions as these that 
some men of the last and the present age have thought they 
could make the butt of their ridicule, and speak of them with 
contempt as beneath the dignity of " Science." 

We could indefinitely enlarge on this theme, and show how 
• correctly Holy Scripture speaks not only of the great features 
of the earth, but likewise of the beings which fill the air, the 
sea and the land. Humboldt calls it an "individualizing ac- 
curacy." Compare its language in the description of the horse, 
the crocodile, etc., with that of the great naturalists of past 
ages, of Pliny the Elder, for instance, and the most renowned 
philosophers of Greece, not excepting Aristotle, and men may 
see on what side is true Science. We cannot, however, dis- 
patch this branch of our subject without insisting on a par- 
ticular reflexion of a general character. The whole hubbub 
which is now raised, not only among " Scientists," but among 
almost all classes of readers — since " Science " is now popular- 
ized — is reduced in our days, to a great extent at least, to the 
theory of " evolution " as explanatory of the existence of all 
material substances, of the mind itself and of its most intricate 
operations. We know what consequences are drawn from the 
theory by some " leaders of thought " in our age, to explain 
the formation of every species of beings, from an original " pro- 
toplasm," by the action of laws independent, in their opinion, 
of any creative act. There is undoubtedly some truth in the 
theory of " evolution." But as the belief in the essential dis- 



14 



GENTILISM. 



ti notion of species has not yet been overthrown by all the argu- 
ments and facts adduced by the supporters of the system, since 
many learned naturalists not only are not convinced, but appear 
more persuaded than ever of the solidity of the doctrine op- 
posed to the modern theories ; it is possible that the only frag- 
inent of truth, after all, that the "new science" can rely upon, 
consists in the fact that the production of material beings has 
begun by the simplest forms, and proceeded gradually to more 
complex organizations ; until the highest and noblest work of 
nature appeared in our humanity. And it is remarkable that 
the strongest proof, after all, that this is true as to the succession 
of material beings is contained in the first chapter of the first 
book of the Bible. For so it is. How could Moses begin his 
narrative by speaking first of the creation of mere inorganic ele- 
ments : earth, light, ether, called by him firmament, and water 
either in the form of vapor suspended in the atmosphere, or 
visible and gathered in the seas ; next of vegetable forms, be 
fore reptiles and birds are introduced ; to be followed by aquatic 
mammalia first, and later on by tame and untamed quadrupeds ; 
the whole of it to be crowned finally by the creation of man? 
How could he do so, unless apprised of it by the Author Him- 
self ? His narrative reaches directly the most scientific form 
that any book on natural history can take. Modem naturalists, 
even now that the more proper and natural order is known, 
begin generally their descriptions by the " bimana " — man ;— 
then the " quadrumana " — apes ; afterwards other ". mammalia," 
before they speak of inferior organizations; they thus unac- 
countably reverse the natural order. Moses was the first, long 
before " Science " was invented, to give the proper classification 
of material beings, commencing by the most simple elements, 
and ending by the most complex being — man — whom some 
Fathers of the Church called, on that account, a " microcosm." 
Let it be understood that this was the real evolution of mun- 
laue things, and science will be reconciled with truth ; and the 



INTKODTJCTOEY. 



15 



first chapter of Genesis will be placed at the head of all scien- 
tific treatises on natural history, as it surely deserves to be for 
its accuracy and completeness. 

Nature presented under this light, offers itself at once to the 
most determined sceptic as the work of a designer ; and it is 
precisely what many modern naturalists try their best to avoid. 
When reproached with the tendency of their theories toward 
materialism and atheism, they exclaim that they are misjudged, 
and their intentions misconstructed. Yet it is undoubtedly the 
main apparent object of all their scientific labor to take away 
from human sight the view of design — which many of them 
certainly positively deny — and to present creation as the result 
of mechanical laws behind which mind may exist, but without 
being seen or felt, without consequently deserving the gratitude 
and love of man. 

But in the narrative of Holy Scripture God is heard and seen 
in the smallest as in the greatest things ; and we have to acknowl- 
edge Him as the true Author, both of the design and of its 
execution. For as Humboldt himself acknowledges, " the He- 
brew poet does not depict nature as a self-dependent object, 
glorious in its individual beauty ; but always as in relation and 
subjection to a higher spiritual power. Nature is to him the 
work of creation and order, the living expression of the omni- 
presence of the Deity in the visible world." And thus it is 
proper it should be. 

Design is therefore visible in all the features of the earth, 
the dwelling of man, the future temple of a universal Church. 
But we must examine more in detail the configuration of its 
surface as conducive to the great object in view ; namely, the 
formation of a place adapted to all the evolutions of human 
society, with respect either to distinct nations, or to the possi- 
bility of combining them all in one great catholic whole. 
Holy Scripture everywhere delights in speaking of the seas 

and of the high mountains, and of the flowing rivers, as well 
3 



16 



GENTILISM. 



as of arid deserts and level plains. It would be idle to imagine 
that the chief object of the inspired writers was to please our 
imagination by a striking description of those great features of 
our globe. As from the very beginning, and throughout all 
those glorious pages, we see mention made of the origin and 
various fortunes of all the diverse nations, to which invariably 
places are assigned often by a direct intervention of Provi- 
dence, we must suppose that the actual configuration of the 
earth was the result of a great design on the part of God, with 
respect both to the social life of individual nations and to the 
spread of the " universal kingdom " of God so often spoken of 
in Scripture. "We would, otherwise altogether misunderstand 
the spirit and character of Holy Writ. 



II. 

Mankind was to come from a single pair ; and if the first 
man had persevered in the state of holiness in which he 
was created, it is very possible that the surface of the globe 
would have been very different from what it is. Nothing in 
that case would have prevented mankind from remaining united, 
and most probably human society would have existed as a Church 
rather than as a civil government. It is, moreover, doubtful if 
the waters of the universal flood, in retiring to their former 
bed, restored to the continents and seas their former delimita- 
tions. But these are mere theoretical questions of which we 
cannot speak; and we have merely to suppose that the -actual 
earth, as it exists since the flood, was intended for the dwelling 
of actual men, such as we know them to be since the fall. 

The general appearance of the earth, as sketched out on a map, 
is that of an all-embracing ocean, over whose surface rise sev- 
eral large continents, chiefly in the northern hemisphere. This 
first aspect shows at once that the Designer intended all men to 



IJSTTEODTJCTORT. 



17 



have intercourse of some kind with each other ; an intercourse 
well-nigh impossible without the all-surrounding seas, as it shall 
presently appear. This is the first and general outlook (a). 

But a more close consideration of the continents themselves, 
with their chains of high .mountains, their broad and long rivers, 
and, in some cases, the large, sandy deserts or rocky and barren 
plains, with which their surface is dotted, intimates that, so- 
cially, man was not to form a universal republic, but must con- 
sent to exist in larger or smaller groups, each of them sur- 
rounded with well-defined limits, determining numerous nation- 
alities. This is the particular aspect not inconsistent with the 
first (b). 

This state of human society shows itself directly of such a 
nature, that, owing to numerous obstacles arising from the an- 
tagonism of character in nations, a universal religion, humanly 
speaking, is impossible ; and, if such an institution exists, it 
must come directly from God. In the supposition, even, that 
He has decreed it, it must remain subject to the play of the free 
will left to man. Thus, the struggle of the Church to realize 
itself, and to continue, after having once started into existence, 
must be the main history of the true religion ; and it may re- 
quire long ages to come to a complete and final state, although 
all along the character of universality must be discernible. The 
fact, however, that there can be but one religion coming from 
God is plain enough, and need not be discussed in these 
pages (c). 

But, before we enter at length into these considerations, we 
must speak first of the adaptability of the human race to the 
whole globe, and show that the earth is really his dwelling, and 
the dwelling of him alone, considered in its entirety. A fact 
most striking and well-ascertained, now that our globe is known, 
is that man not only adapts himself to all countries and all cli- 
mates to which he migrates, but that it is in his nature to spread 
himself over all continents,' and to take possession of the whole 



IS 



GENTILISM. 



earth, although he at first sfarted from a single point. This is 
not the ease in any single class of other living beings, even of 
a high order. The learned and acute observers, who have writ- 
ten on the geographical distribution of plants and animals, have 
been obliged to draw- on their maps curved lines, across the va- 
rious meridians, showing the invariable limits in which the dif- 
ferent orders and families *of organized beings are confined. 
And it would be a matter of great astonishment to find any in- 
dividual of those orders and families out of the well-ascertained 
limits of each. Yet such law does not bind man; the whole 
globe being his by the right of his organization and aptitudes. 

It is true that man himself, in his character of lord of crea- 
tion, can extend the sphere of existence of those inferior be- 
ings, by transferring them wherever he chooses, and naturaliz- 
ing many of them in other countries ; provided he follows some 
rules of artificial acclimation. But man alone can do it; 
and plants and animals will not of themselves choose a new 
place of residence. Thus, even this apparent exception proves 
that the whole earth is the dwelling of man and of him alone. 
Many details contained in modern books of natural history 
would render these considerations most striking and interesting. 
"We can only but refer to them in general. 

(a) Man, endowed with such a general adaptability to all 
parts of the globe, finds it made precisely to suit this quality 
. which he possesses, since the very distribution of water over the 
earth shows the possibility for him to become acquainted and 
deal socially with all other men. Yes ; the oceans and rivers, 
instead of being primarily dividing lines, intended to separate 
men from each other, had precisely for their first object to be- 
come highways and common channels of intercourse between 
the various nations of mankind. To become convinced of this 
truth, which is now, however, admitted by nearly all, we have 
only to reflect on the great cause which rendered, for so many 
ages, India and China almost totally unknown to Europeans. 



INTEODUCTOKT. 



19 



Tlie passage of ships around the Southern Cape of Africa, had 
not yet become possible for western navigators, and the com- 
munication between Europe and Eastern Asia was yet confined 
to the exertions of a few undismayed travellers, or of Arabian 
caravans through the old continent. It took then several years 
to go from one end of it to the other. Hence only a few books 
of travel conveyed all the information Europeans had received 
concerning those distant regions, an information often impaired 
by many fables ; and the only things they could see coming from 
the great East were products of the land or manufactured goods 
imported at a great labor and cost. Those countries were yet, 
in the opinion of Western people, the dwelling of monsters and 
the theatre of fabulous institutions. It looked almost as if the 
inhabitants of the east and west belonged to two altogether 
distinct species of beings, and dwelt in two different planets 
scarcely connected together. But as soon as "Vasco de Gama 
opened the gates of the vast Indian Ocean, a new and wonder- 
ful world was unfolded to the curiosity and energy of men of the 
Japhetic race, for so many centuries estranged from their Mon- 
golian brethren. The way existed before, but was closed. Had 
not the ocean been there, should we know much more at this 
time of Hindostan and Japan than our ancestors four centuries 
ago % Again, supposing that in place of the Atlantic, a barren 
desert, a far larger Sahara than that of Africa, had stretched it- 
self between the old world and the new, it would have required 
a' persistence, an energy, and a foreknowledge far superior to 
that which has immortalized Columbus to bring in contact the 
adventurous Spaniards and the simple-minded natives of Cuba, 
which then would have been in the midst of a vast continent. 
God, therefore, could not render more easy the spread of ' the . 
human race, and the subsequent intercourse of all its members 
together, than by covering our earth with the universal element 
where wood can float, and where a simple sheet of canvas can 
become a sure means of propulsion through the waves, by op- 



20 



GENTILISM. 



posing, in a few feet of the atmosphere, the free passage of a 
current of air. We do not speak of the modern means of loco- 
motion, since they never would have been found out by man, 
if the previous ones, more simple, natural, and always of uni- 
versal use, had not been first known and adopted from the be- 
ginning of navigation. 

King David knew tins particularity of our globe when 
he exclaimed (Psalm xxiii. 2) : " God hath founded the 
earth upon the seas, and established it upon, the floods," 
and (Ps. cxxxv. 6) : " God has spread out the earth upon the 
waters." 

And the sublime king-poet knew the object of this* earthly 
arrangement when he cried out (Ps. ciii. 25) : " Look at the 
great and wide sea, wherein are creeping tilings without num- 
ber, both small and great beasts. There go the ships ; there is 
that leviathan Thou hast made to play therein." 

And (Ps. cvi. 23) : " They that go down to the sea in ships, 
doing business in the great waters : these have seen the works 
of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep. He "—God — " said 
the word, and there arose a storm of wind ; and the waves 
thereof were lifted up ... . And they cried to the Lord in 
' their affliction ; and He brought them out of their distress. 
And He turned the storm into a breeze ; and its waves were 
still. And they rejoiced because they were still ; and He 
brought them to the haven they wished for." 

Job, long before, had in a few words, as usual, pictured viv- 
idly' this great feature of the earth and its object, when He said 
(Chap. xxvi. 10) : " God hath set bounds about the waters, till 
light and darkness come to an end .... By His power the 
seas were suddenly gathered together, and His wisdom defeats 
the proud." The prophet described thus the wide expansion 
of the liquid element, spread wherever terrestrial light and 
darkness extend, and this geographical fact, so favorable to the 
general intercourse of mankind, is at the same time an impas 



INTRODUCTORY. 



21 



sable barrier against the ambition of a proud conqueror aiming 
at universal dominion. 

But Isaiah went further and announced openly the subser 
vience of the seas to the conquests of religion, and the future 
spread of the Church of Christ through the open highways of 
the ocean, unamenable to the laws of a despotic police, and des- 
tined for ever to be left free to the zeal of the messengers of 
God (Chap. xlix. 11, 12, etc.) : " I will make all my mountains a 
way, and there shall be paths over their highest l-anges. Be- 
hold peoples shall come from afar, and behold these from the 
north and from the seas, and these from the land of Sinim." 
And (Chap. lx. 4, 5, 9) : " Lift up thy eyes round about and 
se*e : all these are gathered together ; they are come to thee : 
thy sons shall come from afar, and thy daughters shall rise up 
at thy side. Then shalt thou see and abound, and thy heart 
shah 1 wonder and be enlarged when multitudes from beyond 
the seas shall be converted to thee, the strength of the Gentiles 
shall come to thee ;" and v. 8 : " Who are these that fly as 
clouds, and as doves to their dove-cotes ? For the islands wait 
for me, and the ships of the sea in the beginning ; that I 
may bring thy sons from afar ; their silver and their gold with 
them, to the name of the Lord thy God, and to the Holy One 
of Israel." Could stronger and clearer language express the 
idea under consideration ? 

And as the last words of a seer are always those which are 
more particularly retained in the memory of his hearers, the 
last verses of the prophet give yet mor'e brilliancy to the 
thought in the following words : " I will set a sign among 
them, and I will send of them that shall be saved to the Gen- 
tiles beyond the sea, into Africa and Lydia, them that draw the 
bow ; into Italy and Greece, to the islands afar off, to them 
that have not heai-d of Me and have not seen My glory. And 
they shall declare My glory to the Gentiles." 

(b.) According to the prophet, whom St. Jerome called an 



22 



GENTILISM. 



Evangelist, the mountains even were destined to be " a way " 
fou the general intercourse of men and the propagation of the 
gospel. The sea, however, was a plainer and more universal 
one. TTe may say that naturally mountains are rather an 
obstacle to the intercourse of mankind, and, in fact, they were 
evidently intended for a very different object, and the great 
feature of high mountain-chains so remarkable on the surface 
of our globe was designed for a far dissimilar purpose, which 
must now attract our attention. 

By the cosmologist and the geologist the high ridges of rocks 
— by which the earth is intersected so as to furnish to geogra- 
phers remarkable land-marks to guide them in their descrip- 
tions — are attributed to various causes and are supposed to be 
destined to purely physical functions ; to the Christian philo- 
sopher they afford considerations of a far higher order. For 
him the earth at its creation was intended to become in time 
the dwelling of intelligent and moral beings ; and the smallest* 
features even of its exterior organization must have some refer- 
ence to this destination. Design must appear in all the details 
of the works of God ; and the more striking ones in the exte- 
rior arrangement of our globe must have a corresponding strik- 
ing purpose with respect to the whole of mankind. 

Thus, there can be no doubt that, viewed as a cause of varia- 
tion of climate as powerful, at least, as the difference in de- 
grees of latitude, mountains were formed designedly to render 
the earth more pleasant and more universally habitable to man, 
and that by gathering around their high peaks the vapors of the 
atmosphere, they were to keep constantly filled the various 
reservoirs of all rivers and lakes. But another grander purpose, 
referable, in fact, to the whole history of mankind, appears to us 
written, as it were, on their very rocks, and the most important 
probably in the designs of the Creator. They were to form 
immense parks, with well-defir ed limits, to inclose within them 
the various nationalities into which mankind was destined to be 



INTKODUCTOEY. 



23 



for ever divided. Apparently, therefore, a cause of division rather 
than of union for man, one civil government, one despotism, 
could not be possible ; and the true religion alone, coming from 
God and possessing a divine power, would, at a future day, be 
able to overcome all those barriers ; so that God would make, 
according to Isaiah, " all His mountains a way, and there would 
be paths over their highest ranges." (Ch. 49). 

We are not, therefore, surprised that the prophets of the old 
law delighted so much in describing the mounts of God, and in 
referring constantly to this, the greatest feature of our globe, 
after the ocean. The mountains certainly did not fulfil that 
high purpose during the whole ante-diluvian period ; but see 
how soon after, when Noah became a second father of the 
human race, and left his sons to become directly the pro- 
genitors of the various nations, this purpose is directly un- 
folded. 

We cannot show in detail the adaptation of all mountain- 
chains to this object. They were not, moreover, intended to 
fulfil it alone. The rivers, the seas, and the sandy deserts, as 
well as the mountains, were destined to be the dividing lines of 
nations and races. It is, however, to our purpose to give some 
remarkable instances of it, in order to show that we are not 
merely following the delusions of our fancy. 

In bis general description of Asia, Heeren uses the following 
words : " To enable us to form an adequate notion of the natural 
features of the different parts of Asia, and the intercourse of 
its inhabitants which is dependent on the former, it is necessary 
before all to become acquainted with the great mountain-ranges 
which stretch across this portion of the globe, and determine, in 
a great measure, the nature of the soil, and the mode of life of 
its occupants. Two of these vast chains of mountains extend 
across the continent from west to east, forming, by their ramifi- 
cations to the north and south — by which they are connected 
together — a species of gigantic network ; or, as it were, the 



24 



GENTILISM. 



skeleton on which the surface of the whole country is disposed, 
and to which it is attached." 

Then, describing them, he shows how the races of men which 
they divide differ from each other. 'The first, the Altaic range, 
in a great measure unknown to the Greeks, extends through the 
southern part of Siberia, from the north of the Caspian Sea, in 
the west, to the Pacific Ocean, near the Behring Straits ; the 
second, known to the ancients under the name of Taurus, 
stretches likewise through the whole continent from west to 
east; beginning in Asia Minor, then through Armenia, to the 
north of which it becomes the Caucasus ; turning afterwards round 
the southern coast of the Caspian Sea it runs along through the 
countries known of old as Media, Hyrcania, Parthia, and Sog- 
diana ; where it branches off into two lower chains, one going 
north-east and the other south-east, embracing between both the 
great Sandy Desert of Herodotus, known to us as the Desert of 
Gobi, until it reaches finally the Pacific Ocean in Mantchou 
Tartary. 

These two great mountain-chains divide Asia into three parts 
" essentially distinct," says Ileeren, " from each other with re- 
spect to climate, and the property of their soils ; and presenting 
differences no less striking in the mode of life and manners of 
their inhabitants." 

These last are, 1st, the hunting and fishing tribes of Siberia 
north of the 50th degree of latitude, and of the Altai mountains ; 
2d, the pastoral and nomad nations known as the Mongol, 
Kalmuc, and Sangarian tribes of Tartary, north of the 40th 
degree ; and, 3d, south of this parallel, the numerous agri- 
cultural races inhabiting a country blessed with the choicest 
gifts of nature ; so that as our author says : " The earliest 
records of- the human race ascribe to this region the first 
origin of tillage, of the cultivation of the vine, and the estab- 
lishment of cities and political combinations." 

These striking remarks show conclusively how mountain- 



INTRODUCTORY. 



25 



chains have become, under Providence, the natural limits of 
many races of different aptitudes ; and, carried into minor 
details, this study might become yet more striking and interest- 
ing. A mere child, looking over the map of Europe, will see 
how Spain is divided from France by the Pyrenees ; Italy from 
France and Germany by the Alps ; Turkey in Europe from 
the Austrian provinces by the Balkan ; Austria from Russia 
by the Carpathian mountains ; and how Russia in Europe was, 
until last century, separated entirely from Asia by the Ural 
chain. A good map of Switzerland would show, further, that 
the tribes, originally distinct, which formed what we call the 
Swiss Cantons, had, each of them, well-defined limits in the 
highest ranges of the Alps. 

These are merely particular instances, which could be 
generalized and extended to nearly the whole globe. It is 
clear that the various products of the whole earth — the 
result of the industry of each and all the races of mankind — 
destined to be interchanged by commerce, and thus to form a 
bond of union among men, were dependent on this general 
configuration of the globe. Ko diversity of products could be 
obtained if a dead level obtaining everywhere, the same cli- 
mate, the same atmospheric changes, the same energy of 
nature, should be the universal feature of all countries ; and 
in this case commerce among men would be out of the ques- 
tion, as no interchange could benefit any one. At the bottom 
of these considerations a subject opens which could furnish 
matter to long dissertations. We can only point at it in a 
few words. The multiform divisions of the earth require, 
for drawing out their capabilities, as many different aptitudes 
in those intrusted with the work ; and the general result is 
commercial intercourse on a large scale, and, consequently, 
social union of some kind. We can thus easily understand 
how the exterior geographical configuration of our planet com- 
bines, with the diversity of human races, to form a connecting 



26 GENTILISM. 

link for the whole, and tends to spread everywhere through 
commerce a spirit of universal kindness and amity. We begin 
to see, therefore, how design, already appears tending benevo- 
lently to fraternity and peace. But in the primitive plan of 
Providence, this agency was to he powerfully strengthened by 
the unity of mankind coming from a single pair, and drawing 
the same blood from common ancestors. 

We have not here to prove this unity. " Science " still 
allows us to suppose it, since the greater number of learned 
men still defend it energetically, and, we believe, victoriously. 
But if "science" was universally to contradict it, we would 
nevertheless prefer to follow the lead of " revelation," which 
has never yet contradicted itself as " science " has often done. 
For the Christian there can be here no question, lie must 
admit Redemption if he have any faith, and redemption sup- 
poses the fall, and, consequently, a first single pair. There is 
evidently nothing more to say. 

The unity of mankind is, therefore, for us, a truth adopted 
advisedly, conscientiously, and firmly. God created the race 
one ; therefore He wished it to remain one. He placed in the 
heart of all a feeling of sympathy for all those of the same 
race ; and the line of Terentius, applauded so ardently many 
ages later, expresses the feeling of all at all epochs, but 
chiefly in primitive times, at the very cradle of mankind, not 
long after the great calamity of the flood, when the traditions 
of all families went back so easily to the first, that of Xoah : 
Homo sum ; humani nihil a me alienum puto. The passions 
of the human heart, the divergent interests of many, the for- 
getfulness of common human ties on the part of surrounding 
multitudes, may stifle for a moment the voice of a common 
blood speaking to the conscience of all, and uttering, at least 
unconsciously, the low murmur of sympathy. But reflection 
and the calmness of reason biing back infallibly, in times of 
quiet and peace, the feeling which God has so firmly implanted 



INTRODUCTORY. 



27 



in the breast of all, and which St. Paul expressed so felicitously 
when he said to the Athenians : fecit Dcus ex tjno omne genus 
hominwm inhabitare super universam faciem terrcs. The 
crimes men often commit against this inward sentiment of a 
common humanity, are no more an argument against it than the 
occasional hatred of two brothers in the bosom of a single 
family. 

But it was chiefly in that early period of human history, 
when mankind before its dispersion lived, spoke, worked in a 
kind of large community, so soon after the catastrophe which 
had overwhelmed the whole species, and left but a small band 
of three brothers, with their parents and their wives, that this 
^sentiment of universal brotherhood sank deeply in their 
bosom, and must have become traditional in the race, even 
after its dispersion. From that time down, through long ages 
of ignorance, division, error, and crime, the small still voice 
of human conscience continued to speak audibly, when the 
storm of passion subsided, and appropriated the beautiful sen- 
timent of the Latin poet before he had uttered it, as well as 
after. 

The unity of which we speak could not be forgotten in those 
early ages, because the race had then but one language : erat 
autem terra labu unius — one tonorie *as well as one origin for 
man. Had this language been invented ? Speech is a necessary 
consequence of human thought, and social man can no more 
be understood without it than God Himself without His 
Eternal Word.* To speculate, therefore, on the supposed 

* We do not mean to say that the personality of the Divine Word is 
so necessarily connected with the idea of God in the reason of man, that 
the belief of G-od once supposed the person of the Divine Word is thereby 
known, since this great truth is above reason- and required a. positive 
revelation. But an infinite mind cannot really be understood without an 
infinite word or speech, and reflection will show directly the truth of the 
proposition. The only thing really revealed is that both are distinct as 
to personality in God. 



28 GENTILISM. 

invention of language is at once ridiculous and childish. All 
we know ahout it is, that man has never heen a deaf and dumb 
animal. Individual deaf and dumb persons can subsist in 
human society, because they form an infinitely small minority, 
and are helped by their more favored brethren, with whom 
they have always had means of communication, even be- 
fore the Abbe - de L'Epee invented for them a system of 
signs. But a human commonwealth, even that of a small 
tribe, composed altogether of deaf and dumb persons, is com- 
pletely unintelligible. 

It may be said, however, by the friends of evolutionism, 
that man invented language gradually, as his mind was 
. evolved ; first, signs and indistict voices, like animals and birds 
later on, a kind of pantomime, with, possibly, interjections and 
ejaculations, when he had reached the intelligence t)f the ape ; 
finally, articulate speech when his reason enjoyed full con- 
sciousness. For this they assert. But in their system, as there 
is no higher type than man, from which reason and, conse- 
quently, language can be evolved, both must come, either, from 
mere matter, which is truly incomprehensible, and will not be 
asserted by them, or by the intrinsic power or force of mind 
itself, which from an almost indistinct germ is developed into 
a mighty and powerful individuality. This is certainly their 
only resource, and we doubt if they could express it in stronger 
terms. But this development is more mysterious than creation 
by a superior power. If is undoubtedly making something out 
of nothing, without a supreme agency. And this is not mys- 
terious only, but truly impossible. Ex nihilo nihil fit. For 
the intellect of man is evidently of so superior and altogether 
different a nature from that of an ape, that evolving the first 
from the second is producing something out of nothing. The 
pretension, which they now put forward, of a sudden — so to 
speak — development of the brain, would reduce the evolu- 
tionists to be merely a materialistic sect, and mere materialism 

■ 



INTRODUCTORY. 



29 



ts now condemned forever, we hope. Language, as well as 
reason, can no more come into existence by mere evolution, 
than a complete star out of pure vacuum. Both must have 
originated from above, and received their illumination and 
power from the Eternal Word, Who illumines all men coming 
into the world, and by Whom all things were made. 

We know, moreover, that mankind at first had but one 
language, and we can see at once what a powerful means of 
union there must have been in that great privilege of each 
understanding all others and being understood by them all. 
Had not this unappreciable prerogative been justly lost by the 
overbearing pride of the builders of Babel, how different 
would have been subsequent human history ! Could men 
have ceased to form one great universal commonwealth, if they 
had continued to speak the same idiom ? How many things, 
at least, they would have forever kept in common, of which 
they were deprived as soon as estranged from each other by 
the very words they uttered. To understand it, let any one 
reflect on the bond of union which remains between, for in- 
stance, all English-speaking communities, even when perfectly 
independent of the mother country.* 

(c) The reader is, we trust, now prepared to understand the 
real catholicity established at first amongst mankind, and which 

* We find the following remarks on the " original unity between the 
# languages of Africa and Asia," in the " Herodotus " of Sir George Raw- 
liuson (New York edit., 1870, page 525), and we merely copy them as 
appropriate to our present subject : 

" The peopling of Europe in primeval times by tribes having a similar 
form of speech, which yielded everywhere to the Indo-European races, 
.... is apparent from the position of the Lapps, Finns, Esths, and 
Basques, whose dialects are of the Turanian type. Africa, where the 
Hamitic character of speech prevails, might seem to be an exception, 
more especially since Hamitism is represented by the best modern ethno- 
graphers .... as a form of Semitism, and distinct altogethei from the 
Turanian family, But the early Babylonian language, in its affinity with 
the Susianian, the second column of the cuneiform trilingual inscriptions, 



30 



GENTILISM. 



took a directly religious aspect by the dogmatic truths and the 
exterior rites of worship, which' most certainly a primitive 
revelation alone could grant liberally and equally to all the 
children of Adam. We call this : Patriarchal Catholicity ; and 
the uniformity of religious traditions among men in primitive 
ages — a well-established fact — proves it beyond question. It is 
known, moreover, that it took centuries for religion to become 
totally corrupt ; and there was for a long time such a mixture 
of truth and falsehood in the worship of various nations, that 
nothing else than a primitive revelation can explain many 
Btartling facts well ascertained by the labors of modern savants. 
Even as late as the age of total darkness, just previous to the 
appearing of the " light which was to illumine all men," we 
are surprised to find ourselves occasionally blinded by the 
bright flash of some primitive truths in the writings even of 
shallow poets as Ovid and Horace. 

The nations on parting from each other carried evidently 
to their*new homes the treasure confided to man at the first 
unveiling of God himself to our humanity, and we shall be able 
*to trace many points of direction this " treasure " toot. THe 
dogmas of the unity of the Godhead, preserved at least in the 
personality of One Supreme among the gods ; of the exalted 

the Armenian cuneiform, and the Mantchoo Tatar on the one hand, with 
the Galla, the Gheez, and the anqient Egyptian on the other, may be 
cited as a proof of the original unity between the languages of Africa and 
Asia ; a unity sufficiently shadowed out in Genesis (x. 6-20), and con- 
firmed by the manifold traditions concerning the two Ethiopia?, the 
Cushites above Egypt, and the Cushites of the Persian Gulf. Hamitism, 
then, although no doubt the form of speech out of which Semitism was 
developed, is itself rattier Turanian than Semite ; and the triple division 
corresponding to the sons of Noah .... may still be retained, the 
Turanian being classed with the Hamitic." .... 

The meaning of the whole is that "primitively" the language of 
Europe had " a form similar" to that of Asia artd Africa, whose " oiiginal 
unity is apparent to the best modern ethnographers ; " therefore linguistic 
now confirms Genesis : terra erat labu unius. 



INTKODUCTOEY. 



31 



state of primeval man during the golden age ; of his fall, the 
cause of all misfortunes ; of the immortality of his soul even 
after the fall ;* of the hope left at the bottom of Pandora's 
box ; of the necessity of expiations for sin, of sacrifices con- 
sequently, chiefly the sacrifice of pure and innocent victims ; of 
a possible expiation for sinful ma*n by the austerity of penance, 
except, perhaps, in the case of some few great, inexpiable crimes ; 
of the communication of guilt passing from father to son, kept 
till our days in the legislation of China, but in antiquity univer- 
sal among all nations ; these truths stand out clear and precise 
in the infancy of all ancient races, and previous to idolatry, by 
which they were gradually clouded, though kept for a long 
time under the veil of types or myths. 

Besides these dogmas, the great facts, likewise, of creation, 
under the shape of some imaginary cosmogony ; of a primitive 
paradisiacal state of bliss, of subsequent evil creeping in and 
degrading man ; of consequent universal corruption ; of the 
flood following it, and of a renewed humanity starting on a 
new career, are discovered more or less distinctly in the tradi- 
tions of all Asiatic peoples without exception, and from Asia 
passed over to Greece and Italy in Europe. Whoever reads the 
first pages of the metamorphoses of Ovid cannot but see in them 
a translation of the first chapters of Genesis adapted to the Ro- 
mans of the Augustan age. 

* Mr. E. B. Tylor, it is true, in his " Early History of Mankind," pre- 
tends that " the general prevalence of a belief in the continuance of the 
soul's existence after death, does not prove that all mankind have inher- 
ited such a belief from a common source." He thinks that it was more 
probably derived from dreams and visions of the dead of which he gives 
in his introduction a list which he might have indefinitely enlarged ; but 
few, we suppose, will adopt his opinion ; for the reason, chiefly, that if 
man did not previously believe in the "continuance of the soul's after- 
death," he would have had indeed few " dreams and visions of the dead," 
or would have laughed at them, should they ever come to trouble him. 
The explanations of many modern thinkers are indeed too weak intelleet- 
vally to account for the universality of our traditions. 
4 



32 



GENTILISM. 



But the religious rites of antiquity are of a yet more striking 
character than the few dogmas and facts preserved in the primi- 
tive traditions of men.* "All nations had altars, priests, offer- 
ings and sacrifices, a sacred fire, rites requiring lustral water, 
libations of wine, sprinkling of salt and of flour, prayers recited 
in a standing position with hands raised and head erect. The 
rites of the patriarchal religion as related in Genesis, and devel- 
oped later on hy Moses in the " Leviticus," are reproduced al- 
most identically in the poems of Homer ; in the long-subsequent 
Greek dramas ; in the prayers and rites of the Etruscans in 
Italy, whence the original religion of the Romans sprimg ; in 
what we know of the primitive rites of the Chaldeans, the As- 
syrians, the Persians, the Hindoos. The monuments which have 
remained standing, after so many ages in Egypt, Italy, Greece, 
Ilindostan, and Persia, reproduce on their walls the scenes en- 
acted, as we know, in Solomon's temple, and, at a much earlier 
period, in front of the simple altars raised in Syria and Mesopo- 
tamia by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 

All these and many things else argue an identity of belief 
and religious practice in primitive times ; and we call it the 
universal creed of old Catholicity, which lasted in its purity 
about a thousand years, except probably at Babylon, where it 
seems that the most rank idolatry followed close upon the dis- 
persion of mankind.* 

* Max Miiller, in his first lecture " On the Science of Religion," says : 
" The theory that there was a primeval preternatural revelation granted 
to the fathers of the human race, and that the grains of truth which catch 
our eye when exploring the temples of the heathen idols, are the scattered 

fragments of that sacred heirloom, would find but few supporters 

at present; no more, in fact, than the opinion that there was in the be- 
ginning one perfect, primeval language, broken up in later times into the 
numberless languages of the world." If the celebrated writer meant and 
thought that many have believed that there was "a primeval preternatu- 
ral revelation," perfect in all its parts, and clear and precise as the credo 
of the Christian, he is mistaken in the supposition; and certainly there 
can be but few supporters of it. But if he thinks that God had not 



INTRODUCTORY. 



33 



< It was, therefore, apparently from that great centre of unity — 
the former tower of Babel — that error and superstition radiated 
gradually toward all' the points of the compass, and replaced 
the pure- patriarchal religion by all the aberrations originating 
in the corrupt inclinations of man ; so that Asia, the cradle of 
primitive truth, became at last the hot-bed of the most abomi- 
nable superstitions. 

But the conclusion is irresistible, not, indeed, from the meagre 
details our space has allowed us to give, but from the many 
undeniable facts which have come down to us from the highest 
antiquity, that God certainly revealed to man at the beginning 
a number of truths which may be said to have formed in their 
complexity a system of belief, and a code of morality all-suffi- 
cient for the guidance of mankind ; and the germs of this primi- 
tive revelation have been found scattered, yet preserved in the 
traditions of all ancient nations. Should this not be admitted, 
the universality of those traditions is truly inexplicable. Con- 
trary to the supposition of those who believe that man ap- 
peared at first everywhere in the savage state — nay, derived all 
his faculties from the brute — -the higher we reach in the history 
of man, the nearer we come to his cradle, and the purer and 
holier we find his religion to be. The oldest fragments pre- 
served to us of human wisdom, are likewise the most rational 

spoken to the patriarchs as He spoke later to Moses, and that few now 
believe in such divine communication, he is again mistaken on a subject 
with which he is, however, perfectly familiar. He seems, everywhere 
in his writings, to imagine that the "primeval revelation" was only an 
interior one to each individual, who found in his heart the great truths 
of the unity of God, the creation of the universe, the necessity of expia- 
tion for sins, etc. But how can he explain in this case the primitive 
uniformity of belief which he himself admits, and of which he often 
speaks so well and so eloquently ? In this age of wrangling we ought to 
know at last, and Mr. Max Muller ought to be one of the first to perceive, 
that, with the "inner, individual word of God to man alone," there is no 
possibility of uniformity in the human assent to truth ; although each one 
certainly can reach it, when it is question of the domain of pure reason. 



34 



GENTILISM. 



and consistent with what we know to be the truth ; and without 
going to the length of cfudworth in his ' " Systema Intelleo- 
tuale" without attempting to prove that all the philosophies 
and religions of antiquity asserted the dogmas of what we call 
" natural religion," it is certain at least that by supposing mono- 
theism and its cognate truths to have been at first admitted by 
all, the gradual creeping in of error and the slow progress of 
corruption in belief and morals, is much more naturally ex- 
plained than in any other supposition ; and we shall see the 
whole process unfold itself in these pages. 

Yes! all nations believed at first that there is a God superior 
to all Powers — the Almighty rather of gods and men, the 
rewarder of right and the avenger of wrong ; that bliss and 
woe after this life are to be eternal ; that there was first a 
golden age when God communed with us ; that man lost this 
privilege by disobedience, and that hope alone remained in the 
midst of all the calamities originating in sin ; that expiation is 
necessary and blood required for it ; that sacrifice, and chiefly 
the sacrifice of the innocent, propitiates heaven ; that God's 
law is written in the conscience of man, and nothing that this 
conscience reproves can possibly be right ; finally, that a 
heavenly teacher is recpiired for our safe guidance, and that 
the great hope left us in Pandora's box is, after all, the com- 
ing of such a teacher. 

But if all these truths were the universal treasure possessed 
at the veiy beginning by men of all nations, history has not 
begun universally by barbarism, and we have, on the contrary, 
the strongest proof of an original culture among mankind. 
The suhliine being created to the image of God had not passed 
through au interminable period of education, during which 
modem theories pretend that he painfully and laboriously 
developed himself, and actually changed many times his own 
species, before he could acquire the erect position and the 
faculty of speech and of abstract reasoning. The proofs of a 



INTRODUCTORY. 



35 



primitive civilization, and of universally - received dogmas, 
which could not come but from heaven, are too clear in the 
oldest annals of mankind to allow the new-fangled notions of 
" evolutionists " to prevail among sensible men, at least with 
respect to the human kind. When the chronology of the 
" stone period," of the " troglodytes," of the " lacustrine sub- 
terranean villages," is as well established as that of the 
Bible — -although no one thinks of raising any chronology to 
the dignity of dogma — it will be time to discuss the matter 
coolly, and to see what reason can accept and what it cannot. 
Should the defenders of the old doctrines by which human 
society is upheld, use for their argument||such loose conjectures 
and baseless suppositions as many pretended " scientists " bring 
forth to support their destructive systems, all the floods of 
ridicule that engraving, printing, and oratory can let loose at 
once to overwhelm antagonists, would certainly be lavishly 
spread out*against the luckless assertors of conservatism. But 
because it is question only of upsetting the foundation-stones 
of the social fabric, in order to erect a new and problematical 
one in its place, whatever the new builders may assert, ought 
to be considered as sacred and directly admitted as proved be- 
yond question ; myriads of ages are clearly required since the 
appearance of man, because, forsooth, fossil bones and rude 
implements are found together in strange juxtaposition ; and all 
the wild conjectures of a disordered fancy must be pronounced 
to be the only means of solving a problem which a hundred 
other suppositions can as well explain. But of this we shall 
speak exprofesso in the next chapter. 

JSTo ! although the prerogative of close thought and reason- 
ing seems to have been abdicated by most men of our genera- 
tion, we are not yet brought down to the level of quasi-idiocy, 
and the men of our days are not simple enough to reject plain 
and glaring truths for the sake of adopting at most ingenious 
fancies. 



I 



36 GENTILISM. 

And, curiously enough, a new proof of what we call the 
catholicity of patriarchal religion in primitive times is found 
in a universal fact of that period, which has been thoughtlessly 
CO] 1 3idered as an argument for primeval barbarism, and which 
is, in fact, one of the strongest supports of our opinion. 

All thoughtful investigators, of general ancient history are 
struck by the aspect of human society at its beginning. Every 1 
where, at the time, men are found in small groups, in what is 
called the " tribal state." Evidently mankind began by clan- 
ship. Central and Southern Asia, the cradle of the human 
race, offer everywhere that strange' spectacle. The English 
savants, who have studied Ilindostan most carefully, are com- 
pelled to admit that the tribe system prevailed at first through 
the whole peninsula, and the land-tenure of the present time, 
which the government dared not suddenly abolish, bears, it 
seems, a striking analogy to the primitive land-tenure of the 
Celtic nations ; yet how many foreign invasions, in the course 
of ages, have subverted apparently the original institutions of 
the country ! Ancient Persia, Media, Sogdiana, and all the 
other States of Central Asia, bear out the same supposition. It 
is now admitted that the same took place, to a certain extent, 
in Egypt, where the antagonism of city against city in later 
times was the lasting consequence of the first state of society. 
Every one knows that Arabia, Syria, and Palestine have offered 
at all times, down to our very days, the same spectacle. Europe : 
heroic Greece, primitive Italy, the Spain of antiquity, and all 
the Celtic nations, are another proof of the universality of the 
fact. Hence many writers have concluded that everywhere, at 
first, barbarism prevailed, and that man began really in the 
savage state. But clanship is not barbarism ; and admitting 
the unity of the human species, it must have begun, by clan 
ship, since it all came from a primitive family. 

In the supposition of " evolutionism," men would have 
sprung everywhere, after millions of ages of successive " nat- 



INTRODUCTORY. 



37 



ural selection ;" and the absurd theory of " autochthones," im- 
agined, first, by the overflowing fancy of the Greeks, would 
have to be resorted to, in order to explain the appearance of 
man on the globe. He would have certainly begun everywhere 
in the savage, or rather the brute state, but he would never 
have come out of it ; since the transit of the Rubicon, as it is 
ingeniously called, namely, the passage from brute instinct to 
real abstract intellect, is yet unexplained, in spite of Mr. 
Wallace and of the pleasant author of a late article in the 
" North American Review" for October, 1873. That "nat- 
ural selection " may be busy at first in changing the physical 
appearance of man, and afterwards turns its activity towards 
increasing the volume of his brain, as soon as " man is endowed 
with sufficient intelligence to chip a stone tool, .... or when 
intelligence has progressed so far as to shaipen spears, to use 
rude bows, .... to cover the body with leaves or skins, and to 
strike fire by rubbing sticks," may be allowed to pass for the 
sake of argument. Yet the difficulty will always be for the 
brute to acquire such a degree of intelligence as to perform all 
the operations above enumerated, by its own effort, and with- 
out the assistance of a superiorly civilized master. We have 
seen Jocko, a monkey, serve a lady and gentleman at table, and 
do everything that a well-trained waiter could accomplish ; but 
we- do not advise Mr. Wallace or the writer in the " North 
American Review," if they ever travel to South America, to 
leave their cosy hotel in Rio Janeiro, and go in the afternoon 
"in the neighboring forests with the expectation that they would 
find their dinner ready and nicely served out by the swarms of 
monkeys who chatter in the immense trees of the country. 

If this is the way to explain the " passage of the Rubicon" 
in the " progress from brute to man," and if readers of our 
times are satisfied with such an explanation, we assert that the 
average intellect of our age has strangely deteriorated, and 
that our reason is too easily satisfied, indeed, and admits too 



38 



GENTILISM. 



readily what would have hut raised a smile on the grave face 
of a monk of the thirteenth century. Yet this " passage of 
the Rubicon " is given as a wonderful discovery, and " one of 
the most brilliant contributions ever yet made to the Doctrine 
of Evolution !" — we copy the capitals as we find them in the 
" Review." Henceforth surely the expression, " Doctrine of 
Evolution," must be treated with as much respect as that of 
" Christianity." 

But even granting everything to the partisans of the new 
theory, it is clear that neither their system nor that of the 
Greek " autochthones " could have produced the universal state 
of society mentioned above. As there would be, in either 
supposition, no unity in the human race ; and as, moreover, 
the system of evolution supposes no real distinction or even 
existence of species, although they try likewise to explain the 
origin of such, all the supposed human beings evolved from 
brutes would have presented unimaginable differences which 
have not been sufficiently opposed to these theorists, as pro- 
ducing necessarily a real jumble without order and possibility 
of comparison. To employ a simile which has often been 
used against other and previous sects of " philosophers," there 
is no more probability of the " evolution " of a well-defined 
and organized species, than of the poem of the Iliad coming 
out ready-made from the mixing up together of an infinite 
number of the characters of the alphabet thrown at random. 
For the explanation they give, that through natural selection, 
only one results from many, is not sufficient ; since on account" 
of the process going on in so many places at once, under so 
many altogether divergent conditions, and with no guiding 
control but chance, in fact, under the name of " selection," the 
ultimate effect cannot be but a "jumble" of dissimilar mon- 
sters, out of which man could never issue. 

In the supposition, on the contrary, of all mankind coming 
from a single pah, created at first and instructed by their 



INTEODTJCTOEY. 



39 



Maker, the government that would naturally prevail, at first, 
among men, would be that of the tribe, and all would neces- 
sarily adopt it. Mankind would, therefore, on that hypothesis, 
consist, at first, of an immense number of small groups of 
people, each group governed by a patriarch ; all the details of 
clanship, as they obtained formerly among the Jews and the 
Celts, and as they were preserved by the Irish until the seven- 
teenth century, a period which we can call contemporary, 
would become the universal features of human society ; and 
the first epoch of human history would be the reproduction 
everywhere of what we read in Genesis of the posterity of 
Heber, or of Abraham, his grandson. This is precisely what 
the discoveries of modem historians of antiquity tell us of the 
state of mankind in Asia, Europe, and Africa, four or five 
thousand years ago, a state which continued, as we shall see, to 
a very modem period. 

But was then clanship a condition of barbarism or of civili- 
zation ? To answer the question, we have only to make a 
general remark : When large empires arose shortly after, we 
are dazzled by their brilliancy ; and the monuments which still 
exist of the original civilization of Egypt, India, Persia, Arabia, 
and even Ethiopia, excite our wonder, chiefly when we com- 
pare ourselves, to these nations with all our boasted progress. 
But these splendid empires themselves could only have been 
formed by the agglomeration of previously existing tribes, and 
the high degree of culture which they immediately displayed 
must have existed in great part, at least, in the tribal fragments 
of which they were composed. In fact, the change did not 
destroy the tribes, which invariably continued to exist. We 
propose to prove it. 

We are not here reduced to conjecture. We have the posi- 
tive proof of the book of Job, and of the Hindoo Yedas, for 
our firm belief that the first patriarchal civilization was of a 
high order ; and that the Arabians, who existed before Job 



40 



GENTILISM. 



and Moses, and the East Indians who lived hefore the authors 
of their sacred poems, were men of a high culture intellect- 
ually, and of a brilliant and luxuriant life materially. 

But what we must chiefly insist upon is the fact, that all 
the tribes of which we speak, and into which mankind was 
then split up, preserved the traditions handed clown by their 
first progenitors, which became the common property of all 
ancient races. And there is no fear that any people preserving 
intact and uncorrupted those traditions, would become barba- 
rous and uncivilized. Job, Abraham, and Jacob were patriarchs. 
They lived when original clanship obtained yet universally. 
What elevation of intellect, greatness of soul, firmness of 
character, " and amplitude of mind to greatest deeds,''' as Milton 
Bays, do we not admire in the little we know of their lives! 
The civilization then prevailing spread broadcast the seed from 
which arose the brilliant empires which followed. JSTot only 
nobleness of soul and character was everywhere impressed ; 
but art, primitive art in the Orient, has preserved to our very 
times the human figure as it then was ; not the cast of an ape 
and gorilla, but the majestic features of primeval man, nearly 
, as he came from the hands of God. If it has not the softnes3 
of a Grecian statue, it possesses the august and sovereign gran- 
deur of the King of creation. Phidias had, no doubt, in his 
mind what he may have seen of Egyptian, Persian, and Syrian 
art, when he modelled the head of his Olympian Jove, besides 
a few lines of the Iliad, of which alone all authors speak. 
And it is enough to look at the few lemains preserved in 
European cabinets of antiquities, nay, at some ancient marbles 
dug out of- Cyprus and brought lately to New York, to cause 
one to smile at the idea of man originating in the ape, and at 
the conceit that " our human form divine " in these days of 
progress, is of a higher type than that of those intellectual 
giants who trod this earth three thousand years ago. We 
could enlarge indefinitely on this part of our subject, but we 



INTRODUCTORY. 



41 



must prescribe ourselves narrow limits on this preliminary 
matter. 

The reader, we hope, at the end of this volume, will share 
our conviction that there was at first existing on this globe a 
real patriarchal catholicity, of a truly civilized character, and 
coming directly from God. We must now consider how, not 
having received any heavenly promise of perpetuity, it finally 
failed and disappeared. The first signs of a future dissolu- 
tion showed themselves as early as the building of the Tower 
of Babel, when all the fatal seeds of disunion were thickly 
scattered in human society. We must, therefore, say a word 
of it. 

III. 

The narrative contained in Chap. xi. of Genesis is the most 
rational explanation of the change which certainly took place 
at that time among men, although it supposes a positive in- 
tervention of Divine power. We pity from our heart those 
partisans of an irrational rationalism who directly reject an 
historical fact as soon as it is eleary miraculous, and then are 
reduced to wild conjectures to explain the sequel of history. 
What amount of intellectual labor has been expended on the 
childish effort to " elucidate " the life of Christ and the estab- 
lishment of His religion, while doing away with the manifest 
prodigies related in the gospel ! It is in the name of " Science " 
that many assertions of Scripture have been either denied 
openly or pleasantly turned into myths by writers of this and 
of the previous centuries. And this fact of the miraculous 
dispersion of mankind, on account of a suddenly-imposed 
diversity of speech, has been one of the most violently at-, 
tacked by many modern authors. The " Tower of Babel," of 
course, in their opinion, was a most ridiculous myth. Man- 
kind, yet united, had never entertained such a project. No 



42 



GENTILISM. 



edifice of the kind had ever been raised. It was, in fact, the 
first of "Arabian tales." And they certainly thought them- 
selves perfectly safe in these assertions, as they could not for a 
moment imagine that the very first monument built by man 
could have left any of its ruins in existence to our very days 
to testify against their unbelief, or, at least, that any chain of 
historical evidence could be found to connect with it existing 
debris. Yet in this even their hopes have been deceived, 
and the curious inquirer can see with astonishment the proofs 
of it detailed by Ileeren in his work on the " Babylonians." 
The concordance of ancient authors with the discoveries of 
modern travellers, chiefly of Rich and Ker Porter, is certainly 
most convincing. And should the consequence be denied, 
namely, that the ruins of Birs-Nimrod on the Euphrates are 
the true remains of the celebrated Tower of Babel, we do not 
see how any fact of ancient history can be believed as true, 
since no other, undoubtedly, is more clearly proved. E. F. C. 
Rosen muller has admirably condensed this discussion of the 
Gottingen Professor in his excellent little work entitled, " The 
Biblical Geography of Central Asia." 

Yes, we have yet among us a great portion of the prodigious 
pile raised by united mankind before its dispersion — three 
stories out of eight — and men of our time have actually 
handled the very same " fire-burnt bricks " mentioned in 
Genesis: "Jfaciamus lateres et coquamus eos igniP This 
positive discovery, corroborated by the inscriptions found on 
the spot, and interpreted by Francois Lenormant, render easy 
of belief the remainder of the story — that the builders had to 
part company and look for distinct habitations, because they 
could no more understand each other. And this was the first 
•and sufficient cause of division among them.* 

* George Rawlinson in his "Five Great Monarchies" (Vol. I., page 21) 
seems to object entirely to the identity of the ruins of Birs-Nimrod with 
the Temple of Belus and the Tower of Babel. He relies on cuneiform 



INTRODUCTORY. 



43 



This want of mutual agreement, resulting from difference of 
utterances, has been ever since a powerful source of discord, 
nay, of bitter enmity. Every one finds no difficulty in ad- 
mitting it who is aware of the fact so often mentioned in 
antiquity, of anger and wrath immediately appeased and 
changed into sympathy by the sudden discovery of a common 
speech. Who has not witnessed, even in our days, men thrown 
by various circumstances at a great distance from their country, 
among people of a different race and language, becoming at 
once intimate friends, as it were, because of their discovering 
by chance, through a few words spoken at random, that they 
were born under the same sky, and came originally from the 
same province or city 1 If such is the power of a common 
tongue to excite in the hearts of men warm feelings of reciprocal 
affection, we cannot wonder that a different state of things 
produces altogether contrary results, and that the impossibility 
of understanding each other is immediately the cause of dis- 
trust at first, and soon of mutual contempt and hatred. How 
is it that uneducated people, transplanted to a strange country, 
invariably pronounce, with assurance, that the language of this 
nation, foreign to them, is barbarous and far inferior to their 
own, when they have not, through ignorance, the most necessary 
means of comparison ? We have no doubt that when the f ol- 

inscriptions for placing them in a city of Borsip or Borsippa, distinct 
from Babylon, and thinks they are the debris of a temple of Nebo — a god 
far posterior to Belus. But in his second volume, page 534-, he modifies 
considerably his opinion, and states that " the Birs-Mmrod had certainly 
seven, probably eight, stages — stories — and it is the only ruin on the pres- 
ent western bank of the Euphrates which is at once sufficiently grand to 
answer to the description of the Belus temple, and sufficiently near to the 
other ruins to make its original inclusion within the walls not absolutely 
impossible. Hence .... opinion has been divided on the question, and 
there have not been wanting persons to maintain that the Birs-Nimrod 
is the true Temple of Belus. - ' In a note he names those " persons," 
namely, not only Mr. Rich, Major Rennell, Sir R. Ker Porter and 
Reeren ; .but Niebuhr in 1826, and " recently," he adds, " they have been 



44 



&ENTILISM. 



lowers of Nimrod were hunting beasts and men in the plains 
of Mesopotamia or around the Persian Gulf, they made very- 
little difference between both, because both appeared 'to them 
deprived of speech ; and the men, women, and children whom 
they captured and bound with cords, appeared to them as 
unintelligent as the; beasts of the field, which they drove 
together on their return to Babylon. The nations of antiquity 
which subdued foreign people and wished to keep them in sub- 
jection, never allowed them to use the language of their con- 
cpierors, and thus originated, probably, the distinction of the 
" sacred " and " popular " idioms in Egypt, India, and Iran. 
In modem times, on the contrary, the kingdoms or empires 
whose rulers wish to arrive at a complete unity and peace 
among their subjects, insist on having one prevalent and uni- 
versal language with the ultimate object of abolishing gradually 
all the other primitive dialects and idioms. Greece and Rome 
were the first to inaugurate the policy now universally followed 
among civilized nations. It is remarkable that no religion, 
except the Jewish and the Roman Catholic, has ever insisted 
on a common language for sacrifice and liturgy among tribes 
of different origin although professing the same faith. 1 

We can see, therefore, how, from the beginning of mankind, 
diversity of speech began to oppose the universality, of the 

described and copiously illustrated by Mr. Oppert" ("Expedition Scien- 
tifique," torn. I. pp. 200-216). These '"persons" are respectable enough. 

But a very remarkable' corroboration of our belief on thesubject is 
found in a most interesting study by Mr. Francois Lenormant on a num- 
ber of cuneiform inscriptions brought to England by Mr. Layard, and in 
which the learned Frenchman thinks he has discovered a first Chaldean 
empire anterior to the one described by Sir G. Rawlinson. He calls this 
mnst ancient people the Accads, whose chief city was the Accad men- 
tioned in Gen. x. 10. 

In one of the poems whose translation he attempts, is frequently men- 
tioned " the House with its head erect" — " the House of the right hand," 
etc.; and Mr. Lenormant, grouping all the details, sees evidently in it the 
celebrated " Tower of languages " as he calls it from the inscription it- 



INTRODUCTORY. 



45 



same religion, and how the primitive traditions and dogmas 
given at first by the Almighty Himself to man, were gradually 
to become dim, and finally to disappear almost altogether, by 
the action of various causes, of which the fact now under con- 
sideration was to be one of the most powerful. These con- 
siderations enable us likewise to acknowledge the profound 
wisdom of the Church of Rome, and place before us vividly 
the reason why she has always attached such an importance to 
. the use of the same idiom in her liturgy and sacraments, and 
always granted, with an evident reluctance, the privilege 
of using a different one to some branches of the true Church, 
but only to those whose origin went to the Apostolic period. 

We cannot know, it is true, what length of time it took 
exactly for men to forget their former dialects, and acquire 
new ones, nor how many were thus originally formed ; but 
there can be no doubt that from that epoch began the state of 
things we now witness, when the number of distinct languages 
is so immeasurably great, and opposes such a barrier to inter- 
communication among me'n. Many, no doubt, in subsequent 
times, originated naturally among nations unacquainted with 
the art of writing, by which alone language is fixed, and be- 
comes durable ; and thus, certainly, were formed numerous 

self. He is most, decidedly of the opinion that this edifice was at Borsippa, 
and, consequently, at the modern Birs-Nirurod ; and he says that " this 
venerable monument, with which so many legends are associated, was, 
even at the epoch of the composition of the Accadian poem, in the dilapi- 
dated state in which Nebuchadnezzar found it when he undertook its 
repair. ' The temple of the seven lights of the earth, the Pyramid ot 
Borsippa, 1 says the Assyrian king, in a preserved inscription, ' has been, 
constructed by the most ancient king of all ; ... . but he could not crown 
the top of the edifice; .... consequently the rains and the storms had 
worn away what was built interiorly with unburnt bricks, and thus the 
exterior construction of fire-burnt bricks had split. . . .' " 

The whole composition of the learned French Academician, under the 
title of " Un Veda Chaldeen," ought to be read; it will be found in the 
92d vol. of '■ Le Correspondant." 



4G 



GENTILISJVf. 



idioms of North American Indian nations. But as there are 
certainly human languages which do not possess any number 
of roots in common, such a catastrophe as the one described in 
Chapter xi. of Genesis, can alone explain this complete antago- 
nism of tongues, if we believe the truth of the unity of man- 
kind. 

To this first source of division among men was added a much 
more powerful one, that of the diversity of races. We know, 
from the tenth chapter of Genesis, that the posterity of the 
three sons of Noah was distributed over the surface of the old 
world, and that the three continents were occupied by the 
various nations which sprung from them. They would have, 
henceforth, only one bond of union : the same patriarchal 
religion based on primitive traditions ; and that bond of unity 
itself would be gradually loosened by the opposing forces of 
difference of language, of race, etc., which would, in course of 
time, introduce idolatry with all its accompanying errors and 
crimes, and render the unity of worship, humanly speaking, im- 
possible, and the existence of national religions universal over 
the globe ; so that the future catholicity of the Church would 
become visibly a divine fact,, impossible in truth without the 
direct intervention of God. 

The inspired author of Genesis intended certainly to explain 
in his tenth chapter the spread of nations over the various 
regions of the earth. The names contained in it are under- 
stood by many modern exegetists, chiefly Protestant, to be the 
names of tribes. Catholic commentators generally think they 
are the names of individuals. Some were, certainly, individ- 
uals, as Nimrod and Canaan ; others were undoubtedly nations, 
as the Philistine, and most of those having the same termina- 
tion. But whether individuals or nations, the various races of 
men which have since formed the whole of mankind, were cer- 
tainly derived from them. 

The origin of those human varieties which we call races, is 



INTRODUCTORY. 



47 



clouded in mystery. When we see the persistence of the 
national character in each social family, resisting, during long 
ages, all opposing forces, and exhibiting the same features 
after thousands of years ; when we contemplate each nation 
or tribe, forming, as it; were, a compact and almost indestruct- 
ible unity ; when we mark how the striking differences be- 
tween contiguous peoples continue, passing from fathers to 
sons, without even dove-tailing in the very points of contact 
between each and each ; we demand a cause for all those strange 
phenomena, and we can scarcely see any other than the diversity 
of progenitors. Hence, we all say that these differences are 
in the blood ; and we think we have said enough. The op- 
posers of the unity of mankind would have here the basis of a 
strong argument in, their favor, if, unfortunately for them, it 
did not go too far ; as it is clear that the origin of the human 
race cannot be so multiform, and that one Adam is yet more 
acceptable to reason than four or five hundred. 

All tbings considered, the most sensible opinion on the sub- 
ject is that God presided at this arrangement, which entered 
into the plan of His providence throughout the future history 
of man. And we think* that He Himself gave to each pro- 
genitor of a race the distinguishing characteristics which were 
to pass to all its future members. The otherwise unaccount- 
able permanence of these characteristics is a strong support of 
this opinion. The progenitor himself may be any individual 
in the Hue of ancestry, chosen by God for some reason of His 
own. 

Yet we admit there is a great deal of truth in the supposi- 
tion maintained by several modern writers of note, that many 
of those diversities arose from the various circumstances in 
which the descendants of the sons of Noah were placed, with 
respect chiefly to the special character of the dwelling they 
chose. Thus, as we have seen, it looks as probable that the 
inhabitants of the north of Asia from east to west, down to the 
5 V 



48 



GENTILISM. 



50th degree of latitude, became hunters and fishermen, owing 
to the multiplicity of game, whose flesh and fur they needed, 
and to the abundance of fish in the seas and the large rivers 
of Siberia ; and thus the chief habits and characteristics of 
those nations were acquired. Similarly the immense plains 
deprived of trees and covered only with herbage, forming the 
whole of Asia from east to west, between the 50th and 40th 
degrees of latitude, originated the pastoral habits of the nomad 
Tartars dwelling in those regions from the beginning. Finally, 
the rich agricultural countries of Asia, from the 40th degree 
downwards, furnished to their inhabitants the determining mo- 
tive for their social life, and enabled them to cultivate literature, 
the arts, and the sciences, together with agriculture, which 
have rendered Persia, Ilindostan, and China so celebrated from 
a very early period. J 

This may, no doubt, explain some divergences in the social 
and physical life of many peoples, but not all the facts by 
which they differ; and the diversity of races is alone adequate 
to this explanation. 

But whatever may have been the^causes originating that 
great variety remarked in the nations of antiquity and of mod- 
ern times, there is no doubt that the opposition of temper, in- 
clinations, aptitudes introduced by this dissnnilitude, became 
an immense obstacle to moral unity among mankind. Hence 
the institutions which have always ruled Arabia could never 
prevail in contiguous Persia or Iran. And this last country 
was at all times in antagonism with the nations of the north 
or of Turan ; and thus of all the others. Nothing is more 
striking in human history than this mutual opposition and 
antagonism, the source of all the wars and of most of the calam- 
ities which have afflicted mankind. And this can almost in- 
variably be traced to difference of race among men. It is clear 
that a merely human religion cannot overcome such an obstacle 
as this to unity — hence all false religions are national ; — and 



INTRODUCTORY. 



49 



with such a constant and powerful cause of divergence, what 
was first common among men becomes gradually weakened 
and finally must disappear. Thus the common traditions im- 
parted to mankind by the first utterances of divine revelation, 
grew, by degrees, more and more dim, vague, and uncertain, 
until they were altogether veiled and obliterated by the succes- 
sive additions and perversions of error. To establish this in 
detail, is the purpose of this book. 

That special spirit which characterizes each nationality, and 
gives it the peculiar aspect by which it is distinguished from any 
other, soon grew to such prominence that the features of our 
common humanity almost disappeared ; and men came, at 
length, to consider all other races as enemies, so that the very 
name of foreigner became synonymous with barbarian or foe. 
The geographical limits by which they were separated became 
the scene of a constant border war; and 'unless high mountains 
or extensive deserts intervened, the mutual depredations and 
the incessant depopulation going on in those almost mutual 
grounds prevented everywhere the delimitation of precise 
frontiers, which, in the history of man, has generally charac- 
terized Christian Europe alone. In our own America it is well 
known that the Mexican Emperor considered the countries 
around his dominions as veritable nurseries of men, having no 
other object but to furnish his subjects with slaves and the 
altars of his gods with victims. Such was also in general the 
ideas powerful nations of antiquity had of their surrounding 
neighbors. Among the primitive Romans themselves the 
word " hostis," which was applied by them to nearly all foreign 
tribes, had no other derivation than the word " hostia" — 
victim ; and the old Greek dramatists tell us what was the fate 
of shipwrecked strangers stranded on their shores. 

The early unity of mankind had, therefore, in a few centuries, 
been altogether forgotten, and was replaced by division, enmi- 
ty, and war. And this unhappy state of things was the fruit 



50 



GEXTILISM. 



of the antipathy produced by diversities of race, and by the 
long-continued separation of the various families of nations. 
Egotism had entered into those partitions of the globe destined 
to be the dwellings of each ; every distinct territory had become 
a lair of wild beasts, and mankind appeared to be irremediably 
sundered and split into hundreds of hostile fragments, because 
according to Scripture (Gen. xi. 9), Dispersit eos Dominus 
svjyer faciem cunctarum regionum. 

Thus, likewise, the very configuration of the globe which, 
as we have before urged, was intended primarily as a bond of 
union among men, became a new source of division. Ilence- 
forth the mountain-chains, the great rivers, the inland seas, and 
the all-surrounding ocean were to be truly dividing lines, which 
nations dared not cross, in view of a sure hostility on the far- 
ther side. Occasionally an insignificant stream became a Rubi- 
con, impassable except by the most daring spirits ; and strange 
to say, it was only in the interminable deserts of Africa, and 
the immense plains of Central and Southern Asia, that, united 
in large caravans, men travelled to a great distance for the pur- 
poses of commerce. Every pleasant country became forbidden 
ground for all those not bora in it. The words of Scripture 
placed at the head of this first chapter, appeared no more to be 
true. The earth in all its amplitude did no more belong to the 
Lord, and man lived in each small district of it as a prisoner 
kept within bounds. 

The vastness of the ocean, the breadth of large fluvial cur- 
rents, the height of mountain-chains, the barrenness of sandy 
or rocky wildernesses, had, in fact, become great fences, inside 
of which the different races of men were " parked," and kept 
apart from each other, until in the designs of God, these bar- 
riers were to be lowered down, or thrown everywhere open, by 
the future discoveries in navigation, aided by the introduction 
of a new spirit of universal brotherhood : a spirit which no re- 
ligion for many ages fostered, and which was to be ushered in 



INTEODUCTOET. 



51 



finally among men by the only one destined in future times 
to spread and rule everywhere ; which the Jewish religion 
was not. 

The most superficial acquaintance with ancient history dis- 
closes the facts just enunciated. Men could scarcely know the 
nations living at some distance from them, since the very next 
neighbors were real enemies. To whatever extent may be sup- 
posed to have gone the incursions of a Hirnrod, and a Semi- 
ramis in the far East, of a Sesostris in Syria and Asia Minor, of 
other conquerors in those primitive ages, these few sudden ex- 
plosions of the fury of conquest form but a few short-lived 
exceptions in the general history of those remote ages, in 
which mankind was in fact cut up in an infinite number of 
small tribes, governed each of them by a petty ruler dignified 
with the name of king. The reader of Holy Scripture knows 
how Abraham, with his three hundred and eighteen men, 
fought and conquered four of those chieftains near Damascus, 
and delivered Lot from their hands. The fourteenth chapter 
of Genesis, in which this victory is recorded, deserves indeed to 
be carefully studied, in order to form an exact idea of society 
in those far-distant ages. Yet, antecedently to Abraham, and 
during his time, communications on foot or on the back of 
camels were much more easy than they became afterwards ; 
since the population of many large districts was as yet sparse, 
and patriarchal manners were still prevalent. Men had not yet 
heard of the strict regulations of despotism, nor of the harsh 
measures taken by the egotistic municipalities which soon 
followed. 

Modern researches in the oldest annals of mankind have 
placed beyond question the fact that in India, Bactriana, Iran, 
as well as in heroic Greece and Pelasgic Europe in general, the 
tribal state of society appears to have been the first, and to have 
everywhere preceded the great empires recorded afterwards in 
history ; and we shall have occasion to show that it lasted far 



52 



GENTILISM. 



longer than men generally suppose, coming down, in fact, very 
near to our time. 

Not that barbarism was everywhere the first stage of humani- 
ty. For the clan system exists invariably with real civilization ; 
and the clanship of primitive Ilindostan, for instance, endowed 
with the Sanscrit language and literature, can very well compare 
with many modern social institutions which boast of being civ- 
ilized. But the state of Syria in the time of Abraham, so admir- 
ably described in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, so compati- 
ble with a happy state of society in spite of occasional wars, 
6eems to have been generally the position in which men 
lived everywhere, immediately after the dispersion of man- 
kind. 

An immense drawback, however, resulted from the chief 
characteristic of that system, namely : an endless, and scarcely 
imaginable for us, division ; such a disintegration of society, 
that it soon became very difficult to travel from one point of the 
globe to the other. What has been said, not very exactly, of the 
middle ages, that in the dark period of that name, men were afraid 
of losing sight of the steeple under the shadow of which they were 
bom ; and that, before travelling from Paris to Lyons in France, 
they invariably wrote their last will and testament, can be surely 
asserted of the long period of time following the first free and 
easy patriarchal manners. It was then a kind of feudal divi- 
sion of society carried to its utmost limits, and by referring to 
the twelfth chapter of the Book of Joshua, the reader will see 
how many different kingdoms there were then in a small part of 
Palestine. 

It was only with arms in their hands, and in comparatively 
great numbers, that men could pass from place to place ; either 
to colonize countries yet void of inhabitants, or to establish 
themselves in regions already occupied, but from which they 
first drove away the population. 

This explains perfectly the endless subdivisions of idolatry, 



DTTKODTJCTOKY. 



53 



as each city, each district came to have its gods and its religions 
rites. And hence arose the impossibility of modem social writers 
combining into any system the theological opinions of any single 
nation. Greek mythology, for instance, is formed of so many 
discordant elements, belonging to hostile cities into which the 
country was divided at the beginning, that the task of harmo- 
nizing the whole is perfectly hopeless. 

The readers of Herodotus know how far this good man 
travelled to ascertain the truth with respect to Hercules, and 
how, finding the legend of the hero so different in Egypt, in 
Phoenicia, and in Greece, he gave up the attempt in despair, 
and could not solve the problem but by the supposition of 
three different men of that name. 

The difficulty, in fact, of travelling through any continent 
or large island in those times became such, that even the sea 
appeared closed to the efforts of early navigators, through the 
fear inspired by the certain hostility to be met with at a com- 
paratively short distance from the point of starting. Thus the 
Argonautic expedition to Colchis, across the Black Sea, became 
truly an heroic undertaking, and sufficed to inspire poets and 
historians so as to immortalize the few bold spirits who dared 
the attempt. 

We can judge, by this single instance, of the state to which 
human society was reduced, and how truly insurmountable 
appeared to be the obstacles opposed to common intercourse 
among men. Who could then have imagined that the time 
would come when a universal religion would be proclaimed for 
the acceptance of all, and when the evils consequent on the 
first dispersion of mankind would be remedied as far as human 
imperfection can allow it ? 

So far, we have said nothing of the variations of climate to 
which the human race was subjected by its very aptitude for 
inhabiting the whole globe ; and this was certainly another pow- 
erful cause of division among men. 



54 



GEtfTILISM. 



"We have seen how man differs from animals in that remark- 
able adaptability to every geographical zone. It seems that at 
first mankind spread chiefly under the tropics, and the most 
powerful empires of antiquity are found to have flourished in 
warm regions. Yet the sons of Japhet, from the start, took 
the north chiefly as their portion, and gradually the whole 
globe was peopled. But how different, after a few generations, 
became the inhabitants of the tropics from those of the cold 
zones ! 

We have only to'compare in our days the natives of equa- 
torial Africa with those of the temperate regions of Asia or 
Europe, to judge at once of it. Civilization ought not prop- 
erly to enter as a factor in the problem, since civilization to a 
great degree is independent of climate, as the nations of the 
highest culture in antiquity were those of Southern Egypt and 
Gangetic India. But it cannot be denied that mild or fero- 
cious disposition, precocious or sluggish intellect, impulsive or 
well-balanced nature, depend in a great degree on the direct dis- 
tance from the equator or from the poles. Hence the old Per- 
sian Empire, which spread so easily as far as the Indian Ocean 
in Asia, and the southern borders of Meroe in Central Africa, 
could not cross the Danube in the north, and remained, in fact, 
limited to the southern coast of the Black Sea. The Roman 
Empire, on the contrary, made for middle latitudes, never 
crossed permanently the Euphrates in Asia, and possessed of 
Africa only the northern borders. The Mongolian Tartars, it 
is true, spread both north and south ; but they never formed 
an empire properly so called. Theirs was a fitful and barba- 
rous life, never merging in any permanent and positive settle- 
ment. If the Mongols reigned for a long time in Hindostan, 
they owed it to millions of Mahometan subjects who had come 
originally from Persia. The Mongol Tartars themselves 
formed always a very small part of the people, and it may be 
doubted if many of their descendants can be found in Hindo- 



INTRODUCTORY. 



55 



Btan at this time, although the Mahometan population amounts 
to about ten millions. 

There is naturally an, extreme difficulty of coalescing between 
peoples of extreme geographical range ; and if the English re- 
main in possession of Hindostan two centuries longer, we think 
it very probable that the broad line which divides now the two 
races, will be then as broad and impassable as it seems now 
to be. 

What renders the cause of division more effective is the well- 
known and remarkable fact, that the natives of the most un- 
pleasant and deleterious climates can scarcely adapt themselves 
to milder countries. They soon die away in regions in which 
there appears every probability that they wordd thrive. No 
Esquimau can live south of Cape Farewell in Greenland, and 
. an original inhabitant of equatorial Australia, transplanted into 
England, would as soon disappear as would any of the black 
swans swarming in the rivers of its native country, "taken sud- 
denly to English waters or Scotch lakes. 

Civilized man, it is true, can adapt himself to all climates by 
his foresight and intellect, but even in his case it requires a 
long period of time for his posterity to become perfectly ac- 
climated. 

It is true, that the differences of race and language, the diffi- 
culty of communication by travel, and the climatic variations, 
might have been overcome to a great degree, and have left to 
the human race a power of aggregation, which for several thou- 
sand years it never had, if God had condescended to establish 
for its advantage a central focus of authority or direction. But 
nothing of the kind existed during all the centuries which pre- 
ceded the preaching of Christ and the establishment of the 
Church. Yet a sort of unity was preserved among men for 
many centuries owing to the holy truths originally given to 
mankind. And a counterpoise to the many causes of division 
previously mentioned, would have been found in them, if this 



56 



GENTILISM. 



deposit of faith and morality, such as it was, had been entrusted 
to some competent authority to keep and explain. 

The grand expiation imposed on mankind for its insolent 
pride at the erection of the Tower of Babel, was ft> last for 
centuries ; and, as the sin had been one of comjbinajtion against 
God, preserved in the fable of the Titans, the fittest expiation 
was to Ik- division, expressed so powerfully in the name Phaleg, 
given by heaven itself to the chief patriarch of those ancient 
days. Hence God refused to the human race, throughout the 
period of time allotted in the Divine counsels, a central power 
able to hold aloof at least the beacon-light, calling back all 
men to the memory of primitive revelation. It is true, that to 
supply this deficiency to a certain extent, a nation was called 
into existence for the very purpose of preserving always bright 
and clear, what was soon to become obscure and dim among 
other races. The Hebrew people was not only destined to be 
a kind of* moral centre for mankind — placed, on that account, 
in the very physical centre of the world; — but a directive 
authority for faith and morals was positively established in the 
nation, called the Synagogue, faint and diminutive figure of the 
future universal Church. 

But although the social destinies of the Hebrew people were 
intimately connected with all the great nations of antiquity in 
the midst of which it was placed ; although the Assyrians, the 
Chaldaeans, the Egyptians, the Persians, and, later, the Greeks 
and . the Bomans, were in constant communication with Jeru- 
salem and the Jews ; although all those various races had under 
their eyes the astonishing spectacle of a monotheist people 
worshipping Jehovah alone, and preserving the ancient moral 
code, scarcely modified, from the time of Noah, they were all 
blind ; a veil was over their eyes, as St. Paul remarked later of 
the Jews themselves with respect to Christ ; they could not see 
what the loving intention of God designed they should see ; and 
they all sunk deeper and deeper in the mire of idolatry, atheism, 



INTEODUCTOEY. 



57 



and vice, in spite of the instructive exemplar of the truth which 
they all saw in Judea. Meanwhile division lasted, and appeared 
to be perpetual. And in spite of those brilliant and immense 
empires which succeeded each other, city remained always 
hostile to city, district to district, tribe to tribe. It is a fact 
not sufficiently appreciated, yet admitted now by all, that under 
the dominion of the Pharaohs, even during the magnificent 
period of the eighteenth dynasty, there was no other union 
among Egyptian cities than the will of the despot, and at that 
very epoch the worshippers of the crocodile in one place made 
incessant war against the worshippers of the cat in another. 
The ox Apis was the only god universally respected, on account 
of his supposed identity with Amnion. 

Again, in the Persian empire, when the Achseinenidae were at 
the acme of their power under Xerxes, the innumerable tribes 
which obeyed the despot of Susa, were as absolutely distinct 
from each other, nay, as fiercely opposed the one to the other, 
as they had ever been previously; and to become convinced 
of it, the reader has only to go cursorily over the catalogue of 
, those nations preserved by Herodotus in his description of the 
army of the Persian king. 

The same must be said of the Greek empire under Alexander 
and his successors. Rome, in fact, was the first to insist, not 
on the fusion of the different nationalities she had conquered — 
she never dared to attempt it — but on their keeping the peace 
and not warring on each other. It was the great cause of 
admiration for her eulogists that she had universally imposed 
peace on her subjects, and to disturb it was for the first time in 
human history pronounced to be a crime, which Pome was 
sure and prompt to avenge. And, let the reader remark it, it 
was just on the eve of the coming of the Prince of Peace, when 
the protracted division of mankind was to come finally to an 
end, and the pristine unity was to be replaced by a higher one, 
that such a determination was solemnly taken by the People-king. 



08 * GENTILISM. 

The end, therefore, God had in view in prescribing to tho 
earth its configuration, and in giving to mankind one progenitor, 
first in Adam and then in Noah, was kept in abeyance, and 
instead of unity, division came to be the great feature of the 
globe itself and of the human family. The ocean, spread every- 
where, and penetrating the various continents with its deep bays 
and inland seas, intended consequently for a universal element 
of intercommunication, became an impassable abyss over which 
men cast their shuddering eyes when they looked out upon its 
shores.* The rivers, and the mountains from which they 
gushed forth, instead of being highways and public roads, were 
turned into barriers of division, behind which the timorous and 
hostile tribes looked askance at each other, and thought only 
of overreaching their neighbors, changed into enemies. That 
"articulate speech," so celebrated in Homer as the great char- 
acteristic of god-like man, and by which he is raised so high 
above the lower animals ; the mind's medium of exchange, the 
instrument of sweet intercourse, the great bond of unity whilst 
remaining in itself one, was split into thousands of idioms, 
everyone unintelligible to those who spoke any one of the rest, 
and thus reduced every insignificant tribe to the sad condition 
of looking on all mankind out of their own small community 
as if it was really deprived of speech, and composed of deaf and 
dumb individuals. Religion, finally, the worship of a common 
Creator, deprived of authoritative teaching and of a central 
light, became the greatest source of division, and would of 
itself have made of earth a real hell, inflamed incessantly by 
the burning fire of fanatical hatred and war.f 

* The Phoenician adventures cannot be objected, a3 they were the only 
ones which gradually spread, and proved by their success that all the 
other nations experienced the feelings described in the text. The 
Phoenicians were not, first, so daring as they became later on. 

t The religious dissensions, in post-Christian times, result from op- 
position to authoritative teaching ; the contrary was the case before ' 
Christ. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



59 



At the beginning of this chapter we begged of the reader 
to consider these preliminary remarks as assertions which the 
sequel would abundantly prove. This task we have now to 
imdertake ; but we must first clear the ground by treating suc- 
cinctly a previous question, namely, the now generally-sup- 
posed primitive barbarism of the human race. All our future 
considerations shall certainly tend to this, but not ex jjrofesso ; 
and it is proper, at the very beginning, to look into the matter 
directly, and to see what truth there is in many positive asser- 
tions of the day. To demonstrate the primitive high state 
of man, — intellectually, at least, — it is fit to show first the weak- 
ness of modern theories, built purposely to contradict this 
truth. When it is established that nothing has been really 
proved by the numerous geological and archaeological dis- 
coveries made lately in Western Europe, in opposition to the 
comparatively modern origin of our species, then it will be 
clearly understood that history and tradition have not lost any 
of their real value, and that we can listen to their voice with- 
out fear of being deceived by them. If, on the contrary, the 
assertions of the advocates of " prehistoric times " had, in 
truth been sufficiently established, the demonstration we 
propose to undertake would be proportionately weakened. 
Hence the manifest importance of the following chapter. 



CIIAPTEE II. 



THE SUPPOSED BAKBA1USM OF PRIMITIVE MAN. 

The modem doctrine of indefinite human progress, either 
from the brute — according to the followers of Mr. Darwin — or, 
at least, from the lowest condition of savage life — if we believe 
Sir John Lubbock, E. B. Tylor, and many others — may be 
called, with Dr. O. A.Brownson, "the creed of the nineteenth 
century." "It is held by whole multitudes^ with unquestioning 
faith, or, rather, with the blind credidity of fanaticism. It 
pervades all popular literature, even most scientific treatises. 
It is iterated and reiterated ad nauseam by the press, from the 
stately quarterly, the infallible daily, down to the seven-by- 
n'l lie weekly. AVitli not a particle of evidence to sustain 
it, treading on an earth covered all over with ruins, we know 
not how many layers deep, with the unmistakeable si ^x\?> of de- 
terioration, weakness, and decay everywhere staring us in the 
face, we yet are deluded enough to assert that man is naturally 
progressive, and that the nations now pursue a steady march 
towards the realization of an earthly paradise much more 
desirable than the heaven hoped for by Christians." (Brown- 
son's Bev., Last Series, Yol. L, pp. 226, 227.) This certainly is 
true of our age, and does not speak highly in its favor. 

But we are here concerned only with the pretended starting- 
point of " barbarism ; " the study of " progress " will come 
later on. The first must be treated apart to understand well 
the second. 

I. 

"We have already discarded the consideration of the zoological 
question with respect to the origin of man. We confine our- 
(60) 



SUPPOSED BAEBARISM OF PRIMITIVE MAN. 61 



selves to the historical or traditional view of the case. An 
argument,' however, adduced lately by several writers on the 
subject, appears to us decisive and final on the zoological ques- 
tion. And as it will not detain us long, we are unable to with- 
stand the temptation of saying a word or two upon it. 

If man had really been evolved from the brute by an indefi- 
nitely long process of a succession of specific changes — the 
product of natural selection — we say that geology would have 
proved 'it long ago, and neither Mr. Darwin, nor Lamark, his 
predecessor, would have invented the system. The forms of a 
great number of extinct species are forever preserved in the 
fossil state. The specific characteristics of all these formerly 
organized and living beings are so precise that naturalists intro- 
duce them in their classifications, and we know that Baron 
Cuvier could, from a single bone of any of them, reproduce 
the whole lost skeleton. Not a single fossil yet discovered has 
been found in the incipient stage with respect to any of its 
future organs. And, by a strange accident, Mr. Darwin must 
place this universal fact in the. chapter of accidents — none of 
those innumerable organizations which, in his system, must 
have existed prior to their ultimately reaching the well-defined 
characters of species now known to us, has been allowed to 
embalm its remains in the universal place of sepulture for all 
former beings — the rocks and drift deposits of former ages. 

And this is true, not only of the " ancestors " of man, 
according to Mr. Darwin, but- of all classes of ancient animals, 
of whatever kind they may be supposed to be. This, in our 
opinion, cannot be an accident, but is, in fact, an unanswerable 
refutation of the system of evolution. The supposed forma- 
tions in embryo have never, in point of fact, belonged to any 
zoological system. They are the mere phantoms of a diseased 
imagination. And we may as well at once peremptorily deny 
the immense series of ages required to account for the origin 
of man in the new theory, without granting to its supporters 



02 



GENTILISM. 



the privilege of a serious discussion, which the matter docs not 

deserve. 

H. 

We come, therefore, to the consideration of another pre- 
tended proof of the "incalculable" antiquity of man, and his 
primitive barbarism, namely : the well-ascertained facts of what 
is called the " stone period," everywhere earlier, it is said, than 
the subsequent periods of bronze and iron, as regards the whole 
human species, as well as any particular tribe. 

"We admit all the facts, but deny the anteriority and the 
subsequence in the sense we shall presently explain. "We 
admit the facts, with the remark, however, that they are in- 
variably selected so as to make a perfect caricature of " prim- 
itive man." All the ridiculous customs, all the filthy habits, 
all the horrible crimes which can be found narrated by not 
over-scrupulous travellers, are pui-posely chosen in order to con- 
struct a " history of early civilization." At least, this is de- 
cidedly the manner of Sir John Lubbock and his followers. 
"We do not think, consequently, that the premises are unob- 
jectionable. 

If we consult other travellers, quoted certainly in these 
books, but never given in extenso, namely : Catholic mission- 
aries, we find the state of the case to be quite different. With 
much that they acknowledge is reprehensible, they relate often 
admirable things calculated to raise a blush on the face of 
civilized man. Read throughout the " Jesuit Relations" as to 
jSTorth America, the startling histories of the " Reductions " as 
in the south of this continent, and all the details given by 
recent missionaries in Polynesia, and you will be able to com- 
plete the pictures of which Sir John Lubbock has presented 
only the revolting side. Read chiefly the first letters of 
Columbus, after he had become somewhat acquainted with the 



SUPPOSED BABBABISM OF PEIMITIVE MAN". 63 



primitive inhabitants of Hispaniola. Where can you find now 
on earth such a lovely simplicity, such ingenuousness, truth- 
fulness, and candor, such artless innocence, if we can use the 
expression with respect to fallen and unregenerated man ? And 
as to their exterior circumstances and habits, where will you 
see anywhere, at this time, such a truly patriarchal society, 
such temperance in the midst of plenty, such cleanliness in 
their dwellings, their persons, and all their surroundings? 
Those who, it seems, have undertaken the task of degrading 
man by their theories on his origin, and the supposed history 
of his first state, would do well, at least, to relate all the facts, 
since they rely only on facts, and repudiate with contempt all 
the traditions of mankind on the original " golden age." 

These few observations were necessary, in order to qualify 
our admission of the numerous quotations contained in the 
works of Sir John Lubbock. But we deny the supposed ante- 
riority of the " stone period," and the " subsequence " of those 
of bronze and iron even ; although, on the very hypothesis we 
reject, it be susceptible of proof that the antiquity of man is 
not necessarily on this account indefinite, and that the length 
of his history on earth can very well fall in with the narrative of 
our sacred books, admitting even all the vagaries of the Paleo- 
lithic age, as F. Lenormant and E. Chevalier have done in their 
"Manual of Ancient History of the East," with which we do 
not agree altogether. 

We must first acknowledge — and we do it with real pleasure — 

that among the most ardent admirers and promoters of the new 

discoveries, many give them a meaning perfectly acceptable to 

Christians. Thus, Mr. John Evans, in his " Stone Implements, 

etc., of Great Britain," speaking of some human remains, and 

objects of human industry, found in caves, together with fossil 

animals of supposed great antiquity, says with truth : "It must 

never be forgotten, that the occupation of caves by man is not 

confined to any definite period ;' and that even in the case of 
6 



64 



GENTILISM. 



the discovery of objects of human workmanship in direct asso- 
ciation with the remains of the Paleistocene extinct mammals, 
their contemporaneity cannot be proven without careful observa- 
tion rtf the circumstances under which they occur, even if then." 
The underline is ours. " Another point may also be here men- 
tioned, namely : that where there is evidence of the occupation 
of a cavern by man, and also by large carnivora, they can hardly 
have been tenants in common, but the one must have preceded 
the other, or possibly the occupations by each may have alter- 
nated more than once," etc. 

"We seldom find such candid admissions in the works of Sir 
John Lubbock, and their meaning is plain. It is scarcely pos 
sible to draw any safe conclusion with respect to the antiquity 
of man from all the discoveries which were at first thought by 
many as a clear refutation of the " Bible records." 

The impression left by most of the modern books on the 
"stone and other periods," is that, in the main, mankind began 
everywhere by using mly stone implements ; and that the first 
utensils used were of the most rude manufacture — in fact, just 
made for the hands of an " anthropoid ape," or a gorilla. The 
writers who seem to take such a lively pleasure in thus pictur- * 
ing the first state of man, have, it is true, the condescension 
to admit that those three great periods ought not to be sup- 
posed so completely independent of each other, that no stone 
implement will ever be found in deposits of the bronze and 
other ages. They dove-tail mutually, they say, and have evi- 
dently passed gradually from one to the other. And this ap- 
parent concession is precisely of such a nature as to complete the 
delusion, and render their system simple, natural, and probable. 
But we wonder why they do not see that, even with this con- 
cession, it is completely opposed to the true state of the case. 
Not only all the facts which have been found out do not sup- 
pose a periodicity of the kind they proclaim ; but they evi- 
dently set forth the real contemporaneity of all those periods 



SUPPOSED BAEBAEISM OF PRIMITIVE MAN. 65 



throughout the long history of man. If in each nation the stone 
utensils appear first, and are afterwards followed by those of 
bronze, etc., does not much concern us, when we wish to know 
the real progress of the whole of mankind ? And for this simple 
reason, that Denmark, for instance, where the system was first 
broached, is not mankind in itself, but a very small part of it, 
and it is too palpable a sophism to argue from a small tribe to 
the aggregate of the race— the rude fallacy, in short, of infer- 
ring a universal from a particular. Should they insist that the 
same happened in many other tribes, the sophism remains the 
same ; because from the " periodicity " in any given number of 
tribes, their conclusion is to a similar periodicity in the whole 
of mankind. When, on the contrary, the palpable fact must be 
known to all, even to the ardent supporters of the system under 
consideration, that in this last age in which we live, in the pre- 
vious ages which we can know by clear and unobjectionable 
history, finally in the dimmest ages of antiquity of which we 
possess any sufficiently reliable records, the three " periods " of 
stone, bronze, and iron have always subsisted simultaneously, 
and consequently are no more " periods " when we speak of the 
aggregate of mankind, but they are only three co-existing as- 
pects of the same specific individual, as distinct from the ape 
in the Polynesian with his bone hooks and stone hatchets, as in 
the highest European, with all the paraphernalia of modern 
civilization. 

At this moment, it is true, the number of geographical spots 
where man is unacquainted with metals, is gradually and stead- 
ily decreasing, owing to the universal spread of the Japhetic 
race, together with the complete and rapid means of intercom- 
munication all over the earth, which we owe, undoubtedly, 
to human ingenuity. Yet in how many extensive countries 
must not this still be the case ! The whole interior of the 
Australian Continent, and the large island of ISTew Guinea ad- 
jacent to it, besides numerous smaller districts, no doubt are 



66 



GENTILISM. 



inhabited only by what modern writers call primitive — in our 
opinion, really degraded — men. There you will rind surely, 
fish-hooks of shark's bone, arrows of flint, knive3 of obsidian, 
if the country furnishes it, clubs of hard wood, and axes of 
basalt or quartz. Let Mr. E. B. Tylor calculate how long it 
will take for those tribes to pass from these primitive imple- 
ments to metals of any kind. The gentleman is positive, that 
if left to themselves, those poor savages would surely rise from 
their present degradation to the highest top of the civilized 
ladder. And he naturally finds fault with "the late Archbish- 
op Whately," who had, this time, been sensible enough to state 
in a lecture on the Origin of Civilization, the well known and 
indisputable fact, that " all experience proves that men, left in 
the lowest, or even anything approaching to the lowest degree 
of barbarism in which they can possibly subsist at all, never did 
and never can raise themselves, unaided, into a high condition." 

But to return to our subject, we see that in our own age, the 
simultaneity of the three pretended "periods" exists yet, in 
spite of all Europeans have done to spread their civilization and 
"habits everywhere. Two hundred years ago, the phenomenon 
was much more remarkable. Eai-lier still — at the time of the dis- 
covery of America — the Spaniards and French found in the new 
continent the contemporaneous existence of these periods. The 
French in the ISTorth were confronted by the " stone age " in all its 
glory in the country of the Ilurons and Iroquois ; the Spaniards 
met with the bronze age in full sway, in Mexico and Peru. 

A retrospective glance through all previous history would 
ascertain the same fact under the Romans, the Macedonians, 
the Persians, Assyrians, and even Chaldseans, of the most prim- 
itive times. At all the epochs known to us by history or 
tradition, a number of nations of antiquity-have worked all the 
metals really useful to man. It is perfectly well ascertained, 
, that the methods of the early Phoenicians for mining were 
exactly what our methods are yet now. Job,, we believe, has 



SUPPOSED BARBARISM OF PRIMITIVE MA1T. 67 



described the process in one of his chapters. And another 
previous chapter of the Bible — -a book at least worthy of 
respect — tells us that Tnbal Cain, before the Deluge, if you 
please, used extensively iron for many purposes, as we do 
to-day. Hence they say that he is old Vulcan himself — a god 
certainly dealing in iron long before the celebrated bronze age 
of Egypt or Greece. 

At the very time this was taking place in the Old World, 
many other nations, then existing, used only stone, bones, or 
wood. The question is merely, who were the real " primitive 
men," the first or the second ? — those nameJy using iron, or 
those using stone and wood? Sir John Lubbock says, the 
second ; and we may affirm the contrary. And this will be the 
place to interpose a few observations on civilization as distinct 
from barbarism. The speculators on the " stone, bronze, and 
iron ages " place civilization almost exclusively in the en- 
joyment 'by man of a multitude of little inventions of his 
own, many of which certainly are derived from the knowledge 
and use of metals. Any nation deprived of them cannot 
be called civilized, in their opinion, because reduced to a very 
simple state of life, which they say unhesitatingly is barbarism ; 
and the stone age appearing everwhere at the cradle of nations, 
mankind began by savagery. We cannot admit this statement 
of the question. And one proof that we are free to do so, 
is the striking fact, admitted by all, that the whole of Africa, 
including the most central part unknown till our days, is at 
this time, and has been from time immemorial, in possassion of 
iron and steel. Livingstone found it to be the case, not only 
in the south of the continent and along the Zambezi, but all 
over the extensive country of the great lakes, whence probably 
the Nile derives its source. Strange indeed ! The most invete- 
rately barbarous portion of our globe — wretched, degraded, 
almost uncivilizable Africa, if we are allowed to coin a word — 
has enjoyed the greatest means of civilization, according to 



C.3 



GENTILISM. 



modern thinkers, namely, the use of the most intractable but 
necessary metal, iron, so long that in order to find the epoch 
when the great triangle of the sgns of Misr or Cush was buried 
in the barbarism of the " stone age," we have to go far beyond 
the dynasties of Munetho; and our modern collections of stone 
hatchets and flint arrows from Africa will have to come from 
the head waters of the Senegambia, or contain only the stone 
utensils of the ancient priesthood, obliged by their strict ritual 
to avoid the use of iron in their sacrifices. Egypt, however, 
has furnished a number of them lately, to which subject we 
shall return. 

AVe submit that this fact alone concerning Africa must pre- 
vent the necessary identification of a really civilized state 
with the use of metals, and consequently the forced connection 
of what is called the "stone period" with the savage social 
state. Barbarism, in fact, depends much more on moral degra- 
dation than on physical want of comfort. And when we come 
t<> describe patriarchal society, our readers will understand how 
a tribe or nation may deserve to be placed on an exalted round 
of the social ladder, although living exclusively on the fruits 
of the earth and cultivating it with a simple wooden plough. 
The Brahmin of the Big Yeda epoch, living under his thatched 
roof on the cool borders of a grove of palms, by the banks of a 
limpid stream of pure water, using only stone to break his nuts 
or grind his roots, and covering his body with the cotton he had 
himself planted and spun ; nourishing his soul at the same time 
with the reading of sublime " upanishads," and reciting his 
"gayatry" to the Supreme God at the beginning of his chief 
actions, was more truly civilized than the voluptuous Baby- 
lonian of the same period, enjoying all the advantages of a 
refined " iron age," all the means of luxury f umished by the 
progress of arts, but degraded by the long-established idolatry 
of Hamitism, which from ISTimrod had come to him through 
a succession of downward steps, always the more enticing to 



SUPPOSED BARBARISM OF PRIMITIVE MAN. 69 



the senses that they were more and more monstrous and un- 
natural. 

It seems to our modern scientists that the use of stone is in 
itself contaminating arid discreditable. They do not fail to 
record the fact that in our age it is yet used even by some 
Europeans. But they always take good care to select their 
examples so as to connect the use of it with a kind of semi- 
barbarism. Thus they state with due emphasis that the Irish, 
wherever in their island they are less in contact with the blessed 
" Sassanagh," brandish yet in their clumsy work stone mallets and 
basalt hammers ; and that some of their Gallic neighbors, chiefly 
the' fruit-venders and nut-peddlers of western France, break 
yet the shells between two stones, exactly as tbe roughest Poly- 
nesians do in their* island homes of the Pacific Ocean. They 
are perfectly right in these remarks ; and we remember that, 
whilst yet a boy, we have often bought nuts from good women 
who were at the very time breaking them just as described. 
But since the " prehistorians " are so fond of small details — 
their books literally teem with them — we would like to ask 
them what is the difference of the two methods with respect to 
" barbarism " or " civilization ?" If a simple stone hammer can 
turn out as good a horse-shoe as a steel one ; and if a walnut or 
hazlenut can as deftly be opened and present as temptingly 
the fruit inside, by using a couple of clean white pebbles, as by 
handling a m any-toothed steel cracker, why does the use of one 
argue a higher civilization than the use of the other ? 

We have to ask the pardon of our readers for detaining them 
with such trifles. But it is literally the fact that Sir John 
Lubbock, Mr. E. B. Tylor, and all writers of the same class, 
believe conscientiously that they are' founding a new science by 
accumulating and heaping together almost at random, from 
every book of travel and every possible excavation made any- 
where on our globe, trifling facts, oftentimes of no bearing 
whatever on the question ; on which, however, they speculate 



ro 



GENTILISM. 



in their own way, forgetting, as it would seem, that others may 
draw from the same facts absolute contrary conclusions to theirs, 
when everyone could do so differently, and deluding themselves 
all the while with the imagination, which they often assert in 
so many words, with no little positiveness, that they have found 
the true solution of hitherto intricate problems of the greatest 
importance to mankind ; as if it were their object to assign to 
the human being a position of the utmost possible degradation. 

But is it not true that every tribe or nation began every- 
where by the roughest stone period — what is called the 
Palaeolithic age — using unpolished, stone tools, whose very 
make denote real barbarism ? Is it not a fact attested by many 
discoveries in Western Europe ? Did not man at the time drag 
on a troublous existence in companionship with ferocious beasts, 
in the midst of a frozen ocean, like our actual Arctic region? 
We answer, that this is asserted by many, and admitted by such 
men as Messrs. Lenormant and Chevalier, in their excellent 
" Manual of Ancient History of the East." We reply, that if 
it is proved, it is only for Western Europe, where man did not 
originate, and no general conclusion can be drawn from it. 

Bewildered as we are by the accumulation of innumerable 
facts, mostly insignificant, or proving often only what every- , 
body knows ; and wishing in truth to treat the matter rationally, 
so as to come to some practical and tangible conclusion, we 
haye only to propose to ourselves two emeries : 

First. What kind of researched have been made in Western 
Europe, and what do they say pointedly ? 

Second. Has the remainder of the globe been interrogated 
on the same topic, and to what effect? 

I. Into otfr present inquiry the ages of bronze and of iron 
do not enter, since all admit they coincide with historic times ; 
and we shall have sufficient proofs on our side when we come to 
interrogate anticpiity. The " stone period " even does not offer 
any great difficulty, except for the . first stage of it — - what is 



SUPPOSED BAEBABISM OF PRIMITIVE MAN. 71 



called the palaeolithic age ; as the neolithic, or the period of 
" polished stone," shows already a high degree of artistic 
development, and is generally admitted to coincide in point of 
time with the first spread of the Aryan races toward the West 
and North — an epoch very far from the pretended reign of 
barbarism. But the palaeolithic discoveries have apparently 
thrown back the existence of man to an ahnost incalculable 
distance, owing to the manner in which they have been inter- 
preted ; and the man they suppose must certainly have been a 
barbarian. ■ The question for us will be, Was he the primitive 
man ? At the time he existed, was there no other type of the 
human race on the globe ? And must we begin the history of 
our species by the monster placed under our eyes by Sir John 
Lubbock in England, and M. De Mortillet in France ? 

To treat the subject with lucidity, we will state first the facts, 
and then some of the speculations of these gentlemen. Our 
own we will not offer ; but we will afterwards adduce those of 
other competent writers on the subject, and conclude how far 
barbarism has existed in former ages, as it certainly exists at 
present. 

(a). On both banks of nearly all the rivers of Western 
Europe, often at a distance from the shores, are seen ranges of 
hills running parallel with the streams. If these topographical 
elevations are looked into closely, deposits of coarse gravel 
below, and sand above, generally are found, varying in depth, 
but descending mostly to a depth of from ten to twenty feet. 
These strata are always — sometimes as high as a hundred 
feet, often less — above the actual bed of the river. Over the 
whole a coating of argillaceous clay is spread. In many local- 
ities in England, France, and other European countries, two 
kinds of heterogeneous substances are found imbedded in the 
gravel, the sand, or even the clay. First, pieces of flint — never 
anything else — worked, or rather clipped, unartistically in the 
rough shape of pointed cones, rounded clubs, or flattened spears, 



72 



GENTILISM. 



arrows, awls, etc., never to be inserted in handles of any kind ; 
and, secondly, often together with these the undoubted remains 
of huge animals, some of them of extinct species, others of ac- 
tually existing kinds, but living in countries farther north or 
south, together with extinct species of plants. 

These deposits are generally met with on both sides of the 
rivers, mostly at a distance from them ; and it looks really as 
if the whole intermediate distance across in the entire length 
of the stream had been originally filled with the same deposits, 
which must have been swept away to the sea, or into caves 
often discovered in the neighborhood choke full of the same 
objects. When this occurs near the mouth of rivers, the great 
distance between both ranges of hills, the depth looked down 
into from the tops of surrounding heights, strikes the beholder 
with awe, when he knows that such an enormous quantity of 
material has been swept away by the current and buried at the 
bottom of the ocean. It is useless to add that the insignificant 
bed of the actual stream adds to the effect produced on the 
imagination by the conception of the past. These few words, 
we think, have placed the difficulty before us in all its strength. 
"We are now in possession of the leading facts. Our limits do 
not admit of going into any minuter detail. 

(b). It is easy to suppose how such discoveries, after they had 
been well ascertained, gave rise immediately to numerous 
specidations, some of the wildest kind, all more or less unjus- 
tified by the actual facts. When men propose themselves an 
a priori object the remotest pretext becomes directly a most 
powerful argument. 

First, a name was to be f ound to convey to the student some 
adeepjate idea of the immense importance of the treasures 
concealed in the newly-found deposits. Formerly, being well 
known exteriorly, they made in books of geology a part of what 
was called the Drif t. And this name was perfectly appropriate, 
as the reader must not suppose that the whole globe, or a great 



SUPPOSED BARBARISM OF PRIMITIVE MAN. 73 



part of it, is covered with this now celebrated coating of clay 
above an underlying of sand and gravel. It is found, as we have 
stated, only along water-courses. It is, therefore, a phenome- 
non of drift and nothing else. It came evidently from power- 
ful floods, of the violence of which we can have now scarcely 
any conception. But the name only half-pleased the discover- 
ers, and they preferred to call it the Quaternary deposit. As 
the well-known Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Strata are 
absolutely, or at least nearly, co-extensive with the earth itself, 
the student was led to believe that the new Quaternary shared 
in the same ubiquity. Thus a new geological epoch was in- 
vented. And as remains of human industry have been certainly 
exhumed from the lowest strata of the new deposits — the pre- 
tended discovery of them in the Tertiary itself by Mr. l'Abbe 
Bourgeois and others, has been rejected, and ridiculed even — 
it was evident, they argued, that not only has man existed 
through the present alluvial formations, but that in a previous 
long geological epoch, a barbarian industry had been at work, 
which could not have been but the first attempt at intelligent 
labor by primitive-barbarian man. Thus a great deal was 
gained by the cause of barbarism. 

Secondly, in studying the fauna and flora of this Quaternary 
epoch, another step was made, but not fairly, perhaps, in the 
same direction. The remains of immense mammalia : elephants 
(the mammoth), bears, tigers, etc., the congeners of which in 
our days look like young cubs compared to those prototypes, 
astonished the beholder, and gave a stronger idea of the weak- 
ness, inferiority, and rough life of primitive-barbarian man. 
We certainly do not deny the fact of the existence of those 
huge beasts, since their bones exist, and are now preserved. It 
has been long known that the mouths of rivers in Siberia are 
full of their gigantic carcases. But simple reason tells us that 
if the life of our first ancestors had been such as they describe, 
mankind would have disappeared long before the extinction of 



74 



GENTILISM. 



such fearful enemies as ursus spelmts, fells leo spelva, rhinoce- 
ros tichorinus, and elepJias pvimigenius. The upholders of the 
supposition have evidently gone too far and defeated them- 
selves ; and there must be some other way of solving the prob- 
lem. We will not certainly pretend that because no human 
fossil remains have been undoubtedly found in the Quater- 
nary,* man did not exist, since the flint implements must be 
the work of intelligent beings. But Ave maintain that these 
coarse tools do not give the measure of his intellect at the 
time, and that many things have been lost which might have 
given us a different idea of man as he was. He must have 
been certainly superior in intelligence to all those monsters, 
since being so much weaker in body than they were, he con- 
quered them, and subsisted when they perished. He must 
have had other weapons than any which have been yet un- 
earthed to oppose successfully such huge and ferocious ene- 
mies; and the Bible alone, perhaps, has solved the problem in 
telling us that " there were giants in those days" — a text which 
we will not undertake to explain, since we have not yet met 
with the offensive and defensive arms which enabled man in 
those early ages to maintain his superiority throughout a period 
of such gigantic animal life. No one has a right to say dog- 
matically what was his social and domestic life. "We do not 
know*enough at present to venture even a hypothesis. Shall 
we ever be able to do so ? Perhaps we shall know more when 
the same researches have been extended to Asia and Africa. 

Thirdly, the artistic distance between the rough palasolithic 
flints and the polished stones of the neolithic period exhibits a 
gap, which tells but indifferently in favor of the believers in 
continuous progress. Either there has been a strange severment 
of continuity, or the men of the first period were better artists, 
and not such rough barbarians as the remains we possess of 

* This is the assertion of English writers : the French speak quite dif- 
ferently. 



SUPPOSED BAEBAEISM OF PRIMITIVE MATT. 75 



them seem to attest. To explain the -existence of this gap, 
which they acknoAvledge, the supporters of primitive barbarism 
express the hope that the time may come when the intervening 
links will be discovered. It may then appear that originally 
men were not satisfied with the rude unpolished flint imple- 
ments, which alone are now found. The only conclusion which 
can be drawn is, that we know very little yet of those ancient 
times ; and that the speculations indulged in our days will be 
found probably as wide of the mark as the hasty inferences 
of the first geologists, whose imaginations are now repu- 
diated. 

But should everything be admitted that Sir John Lubbock 
himself asserts, it would not be a solution of the problem in 
his favor. Because, since all acknowledge that barbarians exist, 
and have existed at all times, the question is merely, " Did 
barbarism embrace the whole of' mankind at first ?" So far 
our researches have been limited almost exclusively to Western 
Europe. We have not yet said a word of the two other con- 
tinents, of which we shall shortly have to speak. Man did not 
originate in Europe. He came from the East, and his migra- 
tions, now well ascertained, will tell a very different tale. 
Even in the stone period of the most remote age, he was 
not without congeners in other parts of the globe. We pro- 
pose, in this chapter, to take into consideration some of the 
human races, which, as the best ethnographers admit, went 
forth from the original seat of mankind, to spread themselves 
in successive streams of slow, but continuous migrations, in 
the most remote corners of the earth. Then, indeed, we 
shall be able to compare race with race, and to examine if all 
were barbarous at the origin. Meanwhile we reaffirm that the 
totally degraded state of man as supposed by the supporters of 
the new theories is not proved. And this suffices for us at 
present. The neolithic epoch, which must have been connected 
with the previous one, is certainly admitted to have been far 



GENTILISM. 



f roiji barbarous, and on this account we do not speak of it ex 

professo. 

" "We have," as Mr. Evans himself says of it, page 423, " hatch 
ets, adzes, chisels, borers, scrapers, and tools of various kinds, 
and know both how they were made and how they were used. 
"We have battle-axes, lances, and arrows, for war or for the chase. 
We have various implements and utensils adapted for domestic 
use. We have the personal ornaments of our remote prede- 
cessors, and know something of their methods of sepulture, and 
of their funeral customs," etc. We may add to this enumera- 
1 ion, that all this is often artistically manufactured ; and we have 
also spirited sketches in intaglio, in which the animals then 
exisl bag, including the mammoth with his mane, are represented 
with astonishing precision. Moreover, this (and it is a fact on 
which we lay especial stress) must have belonged to the palaeo- 
lithic age, not to the neolithic, since those animals had disap- 
peared in the latter times. We have therefore to smooth down 
considerably the rough picture offered us of " homo primi- 
tive."- The number of those beautiful artistic sketches found 
in the oldest deposits, increases every day, and of themselves 
alone would prove that man was not then a barbarian. 

But, lastly, a consideration which is of extreme importance in 
our present investigations, and which, consequently, we pro- 
pose to treat somewhat more at length, is as follows : 

Nearly all the writers on the subject, including several sin- 
cere Christains, seem to admit, that in the quaternary geologi- 
cal epoch, the deposits of sand, gravel, and clay followed nearly 
the almost peaceful course which we witness ourselves on the 
banks of the Mississippi River, and -which are present under the 
eyes of South Americans, along the Amazon. Consequently, 
to calculate the time required for the scooping out of the im- 
mense valleys then in process of formation, is merely an affair 
of common arithmetic. It is true, the results of the mathemati- 
cal operation vary in a most wonderful manner. Sir Charles 



SUPPOSED BARBARISM OF PRIMITIVE MAN". 77 



Lyell, according to Mr. John Evans (page 619), requires no less 
than 800,000 years for the whole process from the glacial 
period, during which time man — but barbarous man — is sup- 
posed to have always existed. Sir John Lubbock undertakes 
the same calculation, and finds that 200,000 years have sufficed. 
Finally, the Christian writers of whom we spoke, think that a 
minimum of 10,000 will sufficiently account for the general 
facts ; and to that extent must the chronolgy of the Bible be 
extended. Such a disaccord ought evidently to demand a denial 
of the whole by sensible men. 

It is true, that independently of our sacred records, reason alone, 
and geology, to a great extent, proves that man could not, and 
did not appear on our globe before it was settled definitely, and 
was fit to become his dwelling. And, in fact, the remains of 
man — of his body, I mean — can be found only in the scrapings 
of its uppermost surface; namely, in the drift — the real drift — 
not the quaternary strata understood in the modern sense. 
Since the epoch of the real drift, naturalists of the true 1 
stamp, endowed with a deep spirit of observation, can calculate 
with sufficient accuracy, the time required for the various oper- 
ations going on yet under our eyes ; such as the forming of 
deltas at the mouth of rivers, the spreading of sand on the out- 
skirts of deserts, etc., etc. Yet, we may say it ineidently, 
Baron Cuvier having undertaken to show in his " Discours sur 
les Revolutions du Globe " that our continents in their present 
shape could not go farther up in time than the epoch generally 
assigned for the ISToachian deluge, after he had brought to the 
study of the question all the resources of his exact and power- 
ful mind, all his extensive knowledge, all the means furnished 
him by the libraries and collections of Paris, having, in fact, ap- 
parently given an opinion which could be called final ; what was 
our surprise to hear, lately, from the lips of an eminent geolo- 
gist of this country, that all this discussion of Baron Cuvier 
must row be considered of no value ! We ask our candid read- 



78 



GENTILISM. 



ers, what will be thought in fifty years to come of all the calcu- 
lations of actual geologists and palaeontologists ? 

But to return to our subject. What is positively asserted by 
eminent naturalists of this important quaternary epoch ? Was 
it a peaceful period of ordinary development, following clear 
and steady rules ? Is it easy,, or, rather, is it possible, in the ac- 
tual state of our knowledge on the subject, to calculate the num- 
ber of years required for its formation ? Are we consequently 
able to conclude from the incredible length of time it supposes, 
that man, at first nearly a brute, slowly developed with the 
globe on which he trod ? For this is the real object all those 
modern writers propose to themselves in their investigations. 

On the contrary, our knowledge of this newly-invented geo- 
lugical period tends to prove that either on account of the most 
strange climate which can he imagined, or of the extreme vio- 
lence of water-courses which must have amounted to numerous 
and extensive floods, or finally of the almost complete absence 
, of regular and orderly stratification, puzzling indeed to geolo- 
gists, the celebrated quaternary epoch must have been one of 
severe and constant disturbances, scarcely allowing man to ex- 
ist, and certainly placing an insurmountable obstacle in the 
way of calculators, when it is a question of determining the 
length of the period ; so that the 800,000 years of Sir Chas. 
Lyell, the 200,000 of Sir John Lubbock, nay, the insignificant 
10,000 of Christian palaeontologists, are only unreliable guesses 
which can as well be passed over without a word of discussion. 

The climate, it seems, was such at that geological epoch, that 
neither before nor after, has anything ever been experienced 
to equal its irregularity. The whole series of other strata 
offers nothing of the kind ; everywhere there is order except 
in the quaternary. Yast moraines testify to the existence of 
stupendous glaciers, one of them spreading itself from the 
source of the Rhone, east of the Lake of Geneva, nearly to 
Lyons in the west ; the whole of Europe, in very truth, north 



SUPPOSED BARBARISM OF PRIMITIVE MAN. 79 



of the Pyi-enees was covered with them. Consequently the 
reindeer throve every where over that vast area. Many valleys, 
however, must have been exposed to a high summer heat, to 
admit of their being a home for the elephant. The hippopota- 
mus of Africa, only much larger, foxmd a congenial climate as 
far north as Belgium. Many conjectures have been ventured 
to explain such anomalies as these. ISTot one of them, however, 
is satisfactory. To obviate this difficulty, geologists assure us 
that " the glacial disturbance did not last long." How do they 
know that ? Is not the fact that remains of the reindeer are 
found throughout the period, and that it was the only large 
animal which did not perish, but retired to the north, where it 
thrives yet — a sufficient refutation of the assertion that " the 
glacial period did not last long % " 

But it is well known that extremes of this kind must power- 
fully influence the meteorological phenomena ; and nothing is 
more effective for disturbing the surface of the globe, and for 
producing most fearful storms. We might, therefore, already 
conclude that the quaternary period was, during its whole ex- 
tent, a violent one, whose effects can scarcely be calculated, and 
to pretend to measure it at this time is a dream. 

All palaeontologists tell us that, during this epoch, the at- 
mospheric moisture must have been extreme, and the fall of 
rain nearly incessant. Which fact, joined with the rapid melt- 
ing of the glaciers, must have caused a literal deluge, lasting 
through the whole time of the period. If this be so, (and we 
wait for it to be controverted,) there is then no need of calling 
to one's aid the true Noachian flood, as Mr. l'Abbe Lambert 
has done in his interesting work, " Le Deluge Mosaique, 1'IIis- 
toire et la Geologie," to explain the same facts. Perhaps the 
palaeontologists go too far on this subject. Yet much of what 
they affirm is proved by the short description we have given of 
the enormous water-courses which existed at the time. Our 
surprise is, indeed, great, that Sir Charles Lyell was not dis- 



80 



GENTILISM. 



turbed in his calculations by such an obvious objection as this, 
and that he felt himself at liberty to speak so dogmatically 
on a subject so obscure. 

It is certain that in the whole field of geology nothing is so 
pro! >leii i:it ical as every thing connected with what is called the 
quaternary deposits ; yet it is on this subject men now speak 
most peremptorily. 

Finally, to confirm all these views, we are supplied with 
another striking characteristic of the quaternary period : 
namely, that the " statigraphic classification of the deposits 
of this geological epoch is yet very obscure and uncertain." 
Which means, we presume, that the stratification of the vari- 
ous deposits is irregular and without order, so that palaeontol- 
ogists are at a lo.^s to know how to begin or to end the epoch, 
and the way things used to go on during the whole of it — to 
us a homely but pery appropriate phrase. This, of -course, all 
students of geology well know, supposes an habitual state of 
disturbance during the whole period, constantly displacing the 
strata, and rendering any system on the subject impossible. 

It is true that Mr. Ed. Dupont, after a deep study of the caves 
near Dinan, in Brittany, " has been able to reconstruct all the 
phases of the primitive industry of man, as it existed at the 
time in the country we now call Belgium ! " and Mr. Gabriel 
de Mortillet " has proposed a classification of the whole period, 
which has been adopted in the Paris Museum of National 
Antiquities." But this last gentleman has been obliged to 
designate his subdivisions of the period merely by the names 
of the places where he supposes the remains of each are mainly 
found, thus : epoque du Moustiers — the most ancient ; epoque de 
Solutre — next in order ; epoque rTAurignac — succeeding the pre 
vious one ; and lastly, V epoque de la Madeleine. But it is obvi- 
ous that it is merely the individual view of Mr. G. de Mortillet, 
and not a natural one, based on precise data, as seemed to be the 
one proposed by Mr. Ed. Lartet, namely : epoque du renne / 



SUPPOSED BAEBABISM OF PBIMITIVE MAN. 81 

epoque de Vours ; epoque du mammouth, which at first satis 
fiecl a number of learned men, but had to be abandoned as not 
sustained by actual facts, owing to the confusion of everything 
at the time those deposits were accumulated. 

The conclusion of the whole is well expressed by Mr. Adrien 
Arcelin, in " Le Correspondant, Decembre, 1872 " : "Some 
geologists have thought, not without foundation, that the ap- 
pellation — quaternary epoch — ought to be suppressed, because 
not representing any precise idea. It is, in fact, rather a transi- 
tion from the tertiary period to the actual one, than an " epoch " 
properly so called. Our own conclusion is that nothing is yet 
known positively of the length of the period, and all calcula- 
tions in the face of its numerous anomalies are altogether 
worthless." Thus the barbarism of " quaternary man" is not 
yet proved, any more than his high antiquity. 

But we cannot dismiss the subject without calling the atten 
tion of the reader to the theory of Mr. l'Abbe Lambert, men- 
tioned above. We have not seen his work, but we learn from 
Mr. Arcelin that its object is " to assimilate the diluvian " — or 
as we prefer to express it, the drift — " phenomena to the Biblical 
deluge." The idea is, in fact, striking after one has perused suffi- 
ciently what has been written on the quaternary or drift deposits. 

The extreme moisture of the atmosphere, not only during 
the fall of the pouring rain, but all through the subsidence of 
the waters, and perhaps long after even, must have been nearly 
of the nature described above. With respect to the strange- 
ness of climate, if the deluge was universal, as the literal text 
of the Bible, and the traditions of it spread among all nations, 
except the Macks, seem to intimate, may we not suppose that 
the immense volume of the then universal sea detached from 
the neighborhood of both poles, not glaciers, perhaps, but at 
least immense and innumerable icebergs, deposited afterwards 
over the continents, when they emerged anew from the ocean ? 
What would be the climate of England and France for the sub- 



82 



(, I, a 11 US.U. 



sequent time ? Not very different, possibly, from what we 
described above. Then tbe incalculable rush of the waters, 
when they subsided, might account for the " scooping out " of 
those large valleys, which fill the beholder with wonder and 
astonishment, and whieh excite the wild speculations of ardent 
geologists. In this case, again, we cannot be surprised at the 
confusion of the various deposits, which bewilder learned men, 
and defeat all attempts at classification. The presence of 
human remains — there were many, at least in France, as we 
shall see presently — together with the uncouth animals of the 
ante-diluvian period, both mixed together as they are often 
found, can be best explained by the supposition of the Mosaic 
deluge. For, as Mr. John Evans very properly observes, men 
and ferocious beasts could not live together in the same caves. 
All these considerations, and many others which might be 
indulged in, will for ever prevent the opinion of Mr. Lambert 
from being considered as ill-founded, when compared with the 
theories of " prehistorians." 

On this hypothesis — for it is claimed only as such — the clip- 
ped and unpolished Hint instruments found everywhere in the 
drift, would have been used by the ante-diluvian people; but 
it was not, by a great way, all they possessed in point of art. It 
be may conjectured that innumerable objects, already in those 
far-off ages, invented by man for his convenience and pleasure, 
have either perished, or have not yet been found, and may be 
later discovered in the drift deposits of Asia, where man really 
originated. For if we do not believe in indefinite and continu- 
ous progress, any more than in the barbarism of primitive 
man, we acknowledge in fact that the only thing which man did 
not invent was language. Writing, the knowledge and use of 
metals, the various arts, the sciences, etc., are the proud con- 
quests of the King of creation. But if he had to go through a 
long process of investigations and discoveries after his fall, he 
still possessed reason, nourished at first by divine revelation; 



SUPPOSED BARBABISM OP PEIMITIVE MAN - . 83 



and nothing can give more elevation and activity to the human 
mind, besides its native energy, than the word of God commu- 
nicated first to the race, and preserved more or less faithfully 
during a long period at least of the ante-diluvian epoch. His 
inventions, therefore, were then more rapid and remarkable 
than we can suppose them to have been at a later period. 

These considerations, worthy of the respect of all Christians, 
cannot any more be derided by merely learned men ; because, 
in our age, the truth of the Noachian deluge gradually gains 
ground, and begins to be adopted by men of learning, even 
when unfortunately deprived of the belief in divine revelation. 

The following quotations from Mr. E. B. Tylor, and Mr. 
Maury, deserve, on this account, to find a place in our pages : 

" The notion' of men having existed before the flood, and 
having been all destroyed except a few who escaped and re- 
peopled the earth, does not flow so immediately from the obser- 
vation of natural phenomena that we can easily suppose it to 
have originated several times independently in such a way ; yet 
this is a feature common to the great mass of fluod traditions. 
Still more strongly does this argument apply to the occurrence 
of some form of raft, ark, or canoe in which the survivors are 
generally saved, unless, as in some cases, they take refuge 
directly on the top of some mountain which the water never 
covers. The idea is, indeed, conceivable, if somewhat far- 
fetched, that from the sight of a boat found high on a moun- 
tain, there might grow the story of a flood which carried it 
there, while the people in it escaped to found a new race. But 
it lies outside all reasonable probability to suppose such cir- 
cumstances to have produced the same story in several different 
places, nor is it very likely that the dim remembrances of a 
number of local floods should accord in this with the amount 
of consistency that is found 'among the flood traditions of 
remote regions of the world. The occurrence of an ark in the 
traditions of a deluge, found in so many distant times and 



84 



GENTILISM. 



places, seems to entitle them to be received as derived from a 
single source." (E. B. Tylor, " Early History of Mankind," 
page 324.) 

" The cause of the likeness of the diluvian traditions of the 
people of the New "World to those of the Bible, remains still 
an unexplained fact," says Mr. Maury, who nevertheless tries 
in the same book to destroy the authority of the Mosaic narra- 
tive of the deluge. The fact once admitted, most of the dis- 
c HVL-rh's of the palaeolithic age can be explained. "We will, 
however, show later on that there is yet a better explanation 
of the whole misconception of unbelieving scientists, and 
that not only the actual state of the quaternary deposits, but 
chiefly the human remains they contain, prove their real age, 
and their probable origin bring them absolutely within the 
limits of historic times, and do away entirely with the im- 
mense number of ages supposed to be required by enthusiastic 
prehistorians. 

II. We have, thus far, briefly examined the researches made 
in "Western Europe in the Drift, and compared the conclusions 
drawn from them by many " prehistorians " with those of a 
very competent class of writers on the same subject. We must 
now answer the question, What of Asia and Africa ? 

It seems that a large number of specimens of stone imple- 
ments have already been received in England from Bombay. 
But we have not heard that the circumstances of their discovery 
agree with those enumerated above, with respect to the Euro- 
pean Drift. For the various theories on the quaternary period, 
as it is called, do not rely only, nor principally even, for 
their support on the stone relics of the palaeolitluc age, but 
chiefly on their surroundings in situ; on the remains of 
extinct mammalia, which often accompany them ; on the clear 
proofs of a very different climate at the time ; on their siati- 
graphy, as geologists express it ; and on several other circum- 
stances which have been closely investigated in Europe. We 



SUPPOSED BARBARISM OF PRIMITIVE MAN. 



85 



have not heard anything of the kind from Bombay, so that no 
conclusion whatever can yet be deduced from Asiatic discoveries. 

But an answer has come from Africa, and it is, in its sim- 
plicity, a terrible blow given to the fine-spun theories of " pre- 
historians." Mr. Mariette has already been heard from Egypt ; 
and Mr. F. Chabas, in his "'Etudes sur l'Antiquite Historique, 
etc." (2d edit. Paris, 1873), has summed up the conclusions 
deduced from those African discoveries. Mr. Mariette states 
positively that Egypt and the adjacent countries, chiefly in the 
north, are literally filled with stone implements of the (so- 
called) palaeolithic and neolithic ages ; but all evidently belong- 
ing to the true historic period, to all centuries, in fact, from 
the first Egyptian dynasties to the Ptolemies. They are in- 
variably mixed up with copper, bronze, and even sometimes 
iron utensils. Workmen continued to use them indiscrim- 
inately, probably because silex is extremely abundant all over 
Egypt, and they are as useful as metallic tools for many opera- 
tions. They served in the mines of Mount Sina — which Mr. 
Mariette went to explore — to extract from the clay the tur- 
quoises which are abundant there, and were used by the 
Pharaohs for the ornamentation of their temples and palaces. 
They served around Memphis and Thebes for cutting stone, 
and polishing the obelisks, columns, statues, etc. With them 
are often found fresh-water shells, on the fish of which the 
workmen fed, as well as many objects of Egyptian art of all 
periods, etc., etc. 

These few remarks evidently nullify all the prehistoric 
systems invented by ardent French and English discoverers. 
But combining the facts of Egypt with those of Europe, 
Mr. Chabas draws conclusions perfectly in accord with our 
own, and expressed pithily in the analytical index placed at 
the end of his most interesting volume. We quote his own 
words, on account of the rare good sense they exhibit, so dif- 
ferent from the idle guessing of shallow theorists : 



86 



GENTILISM. 



" Les silex tailles des dpoques du renne et de l'ek'phant (en 
France), sont aussi remarquables que eeux dits de la pierre 
polie." (Consequently neither belong to a barbarous age.) 
"Des outils grossiers et des instruments bien travailles sont 
rcpandus dans toutes les stations." (Consequently no periodicity.) 
" Superiority incontestable du travail de l'os a l'epoque du 
mammouth et du renne." (Therefore no quaternary period, 
so called.) " Le grand deplacement d'eau qui a donne le relief 
actuel du bassin de la Seine a 6t6 de peu de duree." (No proof 
consequently of a great antiquity for objects found in it. It 
was not an epoch.) " Incertitudes sur la duree et sur l'uni- 
versalit^ des phenomcnes glaciaires," etc., etc. A phrase some- 
where in the book seems to indicate that the author would not 
be much opposed to the opinion that all those drift phenomena 
are the effects of the Noachian deluge. 

Mr. Chabas is a man of science, of no mean attainments ; 
and, if we do not mistake, he began his investigations with a 
real bent towards the new theories ; but, in his good faith, he 
soon perceived the error, and, with an honest simplicity, he de- 
clared openly his convictions. 

III. 

The question seems now to be in a fair way of a rational 
solution. By looking at it under a new aspect, we hope to 
solve it in a way which, we trust, may be considered to be not 
very far from a complete demonstration. 

The English scientists generally assert that very few un- 
doubted remains of the human skeleton have been discovered 
among the deposits of the palaeolithic age, if, indeed, any can 
be said to have been found really belonging to it. The French, 
on the contrary, have had the good luck to fall on real treas- 
ures of this kind, to which a slight allusion has already been 
made by us. 



SUPPOSED BABBAEISM OF PEIMITIVE MAIT. 



87 



In the classification of the various stages of the quaternary 
period suggested by Mr. de Mortillet, and adopted in the Paris 
Museum of National Antiquities, the first and oldest epoch, 
we said, was that of " du Moustiers," in which no human 
remains have been discovered. But in the deposits of the 
second epoch — that of " Solutre ". — a number of skeletons, more 
or less perfect, have been exhumed, " well constituted," says 
Mr. A. Arcelin, "worthy in every respect to be called men, 
although offering, certainly, some characteristics now belonging 
only to inferior races." But in the subsequent epoch — that of 
"Aurignac" — to which the remains found at Cro Magnon, in 
Dordogne, France, are supposed to belong, far superior char- 
acteristics are visible. Dr. Broca published in the " Memoirs 
of the Anthropological Society," a most interesting dissertation 
on the subject. He found that, in some respects, that antique 
race " possessed some of the highest and noblest traits of the 
human form, whilst in . some others it could only be compared 
with the lowest types of the present age." 

Already, not only many conveniences for life existed, but 
art was likewise attempted in those productions of sculpture 
and bas-relief of which we have already spoken. The men of 
that very early age worked not only on stone, but also on bone 
and ivory. The representations of the various animals exist- 
ing at the time, and of which several species are now extinct, 
are so well brought out that they are easily recognizable spe- 
cifically, and their individual nature is clearly expressed. 
There is even a kind of boldness in the execution which sup- 
poses in the workman a real artistic taste, at least, in the in- 
cipient stage. 

We are far, it is evident, from finding in " primitive man," 
even in "Western Europe, the brute type of the pretended 
Neanderthal cranium which had produced such a lively and 
triumphant sensation in the Darwinist ranks, until it was proved 
that its age could not be ascertained, and that it might have 



88 



GEHTILISM. 



belonged to an idiot, a class never extinct, even among the 
most polished and civilized races. And the same may be said 
of several other human bones found isolated and mutilated, so 
as to offer scarcely any positive and certain characteristics. 
Yet were such discoveries as these invariably received by the 
evolutionists with shouts of exultation. 

It was not the ease with respect to the remains of man in 
what is called the Quaternary deposit. They were so abundant 
and so well preserved that anthropologists began to study and 
ascertain their characteristics; and the result was, in our opin- 
ion, a complete refutation of the common delusion of our age 
regard in:;- " primitive man.'" Dr. Pruner-Bey was instrumental 
in bringing this about. lie asserted plainly that they belonged 
to the branch of the human family remarkable for a lozenge- 
shaped visage, to which he had already given the name of 
" Mongoloid " — much more extensive, remark it well, than 
the former Mongolian race, but including it. lie thought even 
that he could recognize in the skeletons in his possession four 
principal types, which could be assimilated to races existing at 
the present time, namely, the Lapps, the Finns, the Esthonians, 
and the Esquimaux of Behring Straits. 

Therefore the "man" of the Quaternary period, according 
to Primer-Bey, belongs to history, and there is, in fact, no pre- 
historic man ; a discovery so important that we must consider 
it somewhat at leisure ; and the more we examine it, the more 
surely shall we arrive at a rational solution of the problem. 

First, to establish firmly the competence of the discoverer, it 
must be said that his declaration was stoutly opposed by the 
transformist school, as it is called, namely : by the partisans of 
Darwinism. They pretended that, as, in the opinion of their 
leader, all organized beings are in a constant state of transfor- 
mation, it is not possible to establish the permanent character- 
istics of races, and distinguish one from the other. This was 
to deny the possibility of a scientific natural history ; and as it 



SUPPOSED BARBARISM OF PRIMITIVE MAN. 89 



is certainly a positive consequence of their system, it is another 
proof that it must be wrong. But it is useless to add that all 
men in France, learned in the science of anthropology, declared 
themselves firm supporters of the ideas and conclusions of 
Pruner-Bey. De Quatrefages, acknowledged universally as 
one of the first European anthropologists, distinguished himself 
by his ardent championship of the discovery. 

To understand fully its paramount importance, and show 
how completely it undermines the very existence of prehistoric 
times, we have only to compare its results with the well-known 
conclusions of the best ethnographers of our age. It will then 
be found that the men of the Quaternary period belonged, really, 
to those branches of the human family which have been called 
Allophylian by Dr. Prichard — Turanian, by the majority of 
writers — Hamitic, by very respectable scientists and historians, 
and by the majority of Christian writers, such as De Maistre, 
Lord Arundel, etc., and now are called Mongoloid, or Mongo- 
lian, by such men as Dr. Pruner-Bey, Quatrefages, and Max 
Midler. 

We request the reader's particular attention, since we are 
going to speak of the real " primitive man " among the races 
degraded not only by the Fall, but likewise by a particular 
curse, to the fact, that, although the skeletons studied by Pru- 
ner-Bey belonged to races far superior to the pretended proto- 
type of the supposed prehistoric times, still they were far 
inferior to other races included, it is true, in the fall of Adam, 
but not in the curse of Noah, namely : the Japhetic and Sem- 
itic families. 

Dr. James C. Prichard, in his " Pesearches into the Physical 
History of Mankind," was the first to speak in extenso of the 
almost universal spread in primitive times of various races com- 
paratively barbarous, when placed in juxtaposition with the 
Indo-European family of nations. He called them Allophylian, 
and showed that they were not yet extinct, but formed, even 



90 



GEXTILISM. 



ill our own days, sometimes vast centres of population, chiefly 
in Xorthcrn and Eastern Asia, sometimes less numerous com- 
munities in the north and the west of Europe. He showed 
that the Basques, at the foot of the Pyrenees, were most prob- 
ably allied to them ; that the same may be said of the Iberians 
who occupied one-half of Spain ; and that the Finns and Lapps 
were certainly branches of the same family. He proved it 
likewise of the Tartars and Turks — certainly not a degraded 
race. He includes in the same vast agglomeration of nations 
all the tribes of Siberia, together with the peoples inhabiting 
the high regions of Central Asia, divided between the Turkish, 
Mongolian, and Tungusian branches. Finally, besides nume- 
rous other less important tribes, he admitted into the same 
classification the Thibetians, the Chinese, and Indo-Chinese 
nations ; also the aboriginal races of the Dekhan in India, and 
of Ceylon, so different from the Hindoos of Indo-European 
origin. 

The " Mongoloid " race of Dr. Pruner-Bey, on which he in- 
grafts the " men of the Quaternary period," whose remains 
were discovered at Solutre, and elsewhere in France and Bel- 
gium, is, we may say, co-extensive with the family of Allophy- 
lian races enumerated by Dr. Prichard. 

But the author of the " Physical History of Mankind " went 
further. It was chiefly by the study of the languages of all 
those tribes that he showed their aflinity. And he positively 
disproved by his deep researches the previous assertions of 
Leontier, in his " Letters to Mr. Langles on the Literature of 
the Mandchoos," of Klaproth himself, and of other best-in- 
formed writers, who apparently had established firmly the 
opinion of a radical difference in the languages chiefly of the 
Tartar, Mongolian, and Tungusian families. Dr. Prichard dem- 
onstrated so completely the affinity of language in all the 
tribes and nations which he called Allophylian, that from his 
time the decision has been considered as final ; and the best 



SUPPOSED BARBARISM OF PRIMITIVE HAN. 



91 



ethnographers of our times, besides such men as George Raw- 
linson and Max Muller, fully admit it as incontestable. 

The name, Allophylian, given by Dr. Prichard to this im- 
mense agglomeration, was, it is true, soon forgotten, or at least 
neglected ; and a new one, Turanian, was introduced. But its 
introduction brought out no new view on the subject, or none 
worth chronicling. 

In Sir Greorge Rawlinson's " Herodotus " — Tom. 1, Essay xi. 
— we find a succinct, we may say, indeed, exhaustive discussion 
on the " Tatar or Turanian races," as he calls them ; and he has 
certainly collected there all the sound erudition, ancient or 
modern, which we possess on the topic. We can give only the 
conclusions he has reached ; but they must not be omitted on 
account of their importance. 

He gives more details than Prichard on the languages used 
by the various families of this ancient race, and admits that in 
" character and genius the Turanian tongues may be said to 
resemble one another." He pretends, it is true, that " although 
the connection between them may be accounted for by real con- 
sanguinity or descent from a common stock, it does not necessi- 
tate such a supposition, but it may be sufficiently explained 
without it. The principle of agglutination, as it is called, 
which is the most marked characteristic of their languages, 
seems almost a necessary feature of any language in a constant 
state of flux and change, absolutely devoid of a literature, and 
maintaining itself in existence by means of the scanty conversa- 
tion of nomads." But all the remarks which follow this sin- 
gular or rather too sweeping opinion of the learned English- 
man, tend to show that he believed with Prichard in the real 
and substantial affinity of language between all these tribes. 
And after enumerating the various original races of Western 
and Central Asia, he adds a few phrases, which we quote 
on account of their important bearing on our present subject : 
" The primitive form of the tongue .... has remained, from 



92 



GENTILISM. 



the earliest times to the present day, the language of four-fifths 
of Asia, and of many of the remoter parts of Europe. It is 
spoken hy the Finns and the Lapps .... the Ostiaks and 
Samoyeds, by all the various races which wander over the vast 
steppes of Northern Asia, and Eastern Europe ; by the hill- 
tribes of India — the Dekhan — and by many nations of the 
E istern Archipelago." We see its co-extension with the Allo- 
phylian family of Dr. Pricbard. To show, moreover, that their 
language is not so unsettled as he seems to imply in this pas- 
sage, he quotes, in his notes on the subject, Max Midler, who 
certainly, in his lectures " On the Science of Religion," in- 
cludes, with Pricbard, Thibet and China in the category. And 
there is, and there certainly has been, a "literature " in those 
Turanian countries. lie mentions several times, likewise, the 
remarkable fact that in most cuneiform inscriptions found in 
formerly civilized countries of Asia, there is not only a Sanscrit 
as well as a Semitic column, but also a Turanian one, so that 
they are called " trilingual." Thus identifying, as many eth- 
nographers do, the Turanian with the Ilamitie family of nations. 
We shall show this more fully presently. Asia exhibits yet 
in all its principal inscriptions the original division of mankind 
among the three sons of Noah, beyond which we have no traces 
of " primitive man." Dr. Pruner-Bey, in his classification of 
the races found in the quaternary period, cannot consequently 
extend it to the epoch previous to the Deluge, but must confine 
this nomenclature to a posterior period of time, since it is only 
later on that there have been Lapps, Finns, Esthonians, and 
Esquimaux, whose types he has discovered among the remains 
of Solutre and of Cro Magnon. Those remains, therefore, 
belong really to historic, not to prehistoric times. 

A second general remark of great importance made by Sir 
George Rawlinson, regards the priority of the spread of the 
Turanian family to the Semitic and Indo-European branches, 
which certainly appear in history after the Turanians. The 



SUPPOSED BARBARISM OF PRIMITIVE MAN". 93 



Paschal Chronicle, Epiph'anius (adv. h teres), and John of Malala 
(Chronogr.), speak of a period which they designate by the term 
^Kv^iofibg, when Turanian or Scythic races were predomi- 
nant, and when Aryan or Semitic civilization does not seem to 
have been developed. Berosus and Justinus, the first by allud- 
ing to the Median dynasty, the second by what he calls the 
Scythic domination, evidently refer to this early epoch. In 
the time of Herodotus there was yet everywhere in Western 
Asia a large Scythic element in the population, which gave 
grounds for the supposition that formerly it was predominant. 
And the recently-discovered cuneiform records place the fact 
beyond a doubt. These Scythic writings appear not only in 
Media, but in Persia proper, chiefly at Pasagardae. 

To use the very words of Pawlinson : " All this can only be 
accounted for by the supposition that before the great immigra- 
tion of the Aryan races from the East, Scythic, or Tatar, tribes 
occupied the countries seized by them. This population was 
for the most part absorbed in the conquering element. In 
places, however, it maintained itself in some distinctness, and 
retained a quasi nationality, standing to the conquerors as the 
Welsh and ancient Cornish to the Anglo-Saxons of our own 
country." 

On these sensible observations of the great English writer, we 
may be allowed to remark that the priority of which he speaks 
cannot have been one including many ages, as the prehistoric 
writers suppose. It is clearly allowable to speak of the prior 
period of Sicv'bLa^bg as of an historic epoch ; and thus the 
human remains of the so-called quaternary deposits in France 
do not belong in fact to prehistoric times : since the existence 
of the Lapps, Finns, Esthonians, etc., being admittedly included 
in that of the Scythic, or Turanian, or Allophjlian tribes— 
whichever of these names the reader may adopt — everything 
found in the drift, even of the palaeolithic age, must be referred 
to the same period of time. 



94 



Sir George Kawlinson's clear details on the Turanian race con- 
tain yet another remarkable fact, which ought not to be omit- 
ted in these investigations. The generic name he gives to the 
race itself — Turanian — includes not only Scy thic, or Tatar, tribes 
of Central and Northern Asia, as well as of Northern and "West- 
ern Kurope, but likewise the Ilamitic populations of nearly the 
whole of Africa, and of Southern Arabia and Asia. The de- 
tails ought to be read in the work to which we refer, since 
the limit we have assigned to ourselves doss not allow us to 
quote them m extenso. But from the whole the conclusion 
remains, that primitively the whole of Asia, Africa, and prob- 
ably Europe, was inhabited by a race whose language differed 
certainly in most of the tribes composing it, but partook evi- 
ih ntly of a common characteristic, and was of a similar nature. 
This similarity consisted chiefly in its form oy agglutination. 
The ancient language of Egypt bore certainly that character, 
as well as that of actual China. That race is undoubtedly the 
most ancient with which we now are acquainted. Neverthe- 
less, the immense addition to historic knowledge, acquired 
lately by the arduous labors of many investigators, enables us 
to assert that it does not reach beyond historic times. To that 
race belonged certainly the skeletons studied by Dr. Pruner- 
Bey, since the Lapps, Finns, and Esthonians are invariably 
ascribed to it by all modern writers on the subject. But Baw- 
linson, who sticks to the term " Turanian," by which he distin- 
guishes it, is bound, by his own list of nations, to include in 
it all the Ilamitic tribes known in ancient times. 

Hence, Christian ethnographers and men of science have des- 
ignated it by this last name, and state boldly, and probably 
truly, that the children of Ham spread at first more rapidly on 
the earth than those of Sem and Japhet ; and thus took posses- 
sion of the places where their more favored brethren were to 
come after them, and to assume the authority over them, prom- 
ised by the father of all future men — Noah himself. Thus 



SUPPOSED BARBARISM OF PRIMITIVE MAN. 



95 



the priority of which we spoke is not that of the race itself, 
but of its extension. The reason of its inferiority in this case 
is not that it was a more primitive state of humanity, but that 
it lay under a curse. "We may here remark, incidentally, that 
Mr. de Maistre, in his celebrated passage of the " Soirees de St. 
Petersbourg," quoted by Lord Arundel at the head of his chap- 
ter on " Tradition," does not suppose the curse to have been a 
single one, as that of Noah referred to above ; but he explains 
the existence of perhaps many savage tribes by the crimes of 
their chieftains. " A chief of a nation," he says, " having 
altered the principle of morality in his household by one of 
those prevarications which, so far as we can judge, are no 
longer possible in the 'actual state of things — because happily 
our knowledge is no longer such as to allow us to become cul- 
pable in this degree ; this chief of a nation, I say, transmits the 
curse to his posterity ; and every constant force being accele- 
rating in its nature, this degradation, weighing incessantly upon 
his descendants, has ended in making them what we call 
savages" 

Here, however, as we speak of a vast primitive race, com- 
posed of an almost indefinite number of tribes, the curse must 
have happened at the very beginning of mankind, and can be 
explained only by the fact recorded in the Book of Genesis. 
There are considerations on the subject in the chapter " on 
primitive man " of the recent work of Lord Arundel, well 
worthy of perusal. He, however, thinks that the Hamitic fam- 
ily was not co-extensive with the Turanian race, which, be 
says, is a philological, not an ethnic, entity ; and this observation, 
striking at first, is, in my opinion, calculated to create a far 
greater difficulty than the one it obviates. The noble writer, 
in the course of his remarks, seems to limit the Hamitic race to 
black, or nearly black, tribes, as he readily classifies with it the 
degraded races of Hindostan, the Sudras particularly, on ac- 
count of their dark complexion. But is he right in placing 



96 



GENTILISM. 



" blackness," as he calls it, among the essential characteristics of 
the Ilamitic family ? The Ilamitic race spread from the very 
beginning, not only in Egypt and Ethiopia, but likewise in Baby- 
lonia, Palestine, and along the Syrian coast ; many nations 
sprang from it not only were not black, hut were remarkable 
for their ruddy complexion. 

"We prefer, therefore, not to distinguish, ethnically, the Tu- 
ranians of the North and West from the Hamites of the South 
and East. And in this we are in harmony with the best ethnog- 
raphers of our time. All the facts we have adduced, tend to 
prove .the real origin of the skeletons found in the " Quater- 
nary " deposits of France. 

A great part of this is confirmed by the name given by 
Pruner-Bey to the race whose remains were found particularly 
at Solutro and Cro Magnon. lie calls it Mongoloid. Not 
that Mongolians alone are included in it, but because the chief 
members composing the whole body in our time are truly Mon- 
golians. The term, then, becomes synonymous with Turanian, 
and Max Miiller, everywhere in his works, but particularly in 
his third lecture " On the Science of Religion," insists par- 
ticularly on this point, that the " Turanian world," as he calls 
it, is chiefly composed in our days of "the Chinese, the Mon- 
golians, the Samoyeds, the Finns, and the Lapps." 

Our readers will, we think, by this time have perceived the 
reason of the great importance we have attached to the discov- 
ery of those human skeletons in France, studied and inter- 
preted by a learned Frenchman, whose name indicates that 
probably he belongs to that class of his Mussulmanized coun- 
trymen attached to the service of the present Khedive of 
Egypt, and that consequently he had no preconceived Christian 
theory to subserve in his investigations and declarations. 

"We must not omit another and last argument in the same 
direction, which, in the wealth of matter, had well nigh 
escaped, and which no one will consider as without weight. 



SUPPOSED BARBARISM OF PRIMITIVE MAN. 97 



Mr. A. Arcelin positively states that human types have been 
found in the same localities, so nearly bearing the character- 
istics of the Aryan race, that it is very likely some early migra- 
tion of it had already reached the centre of France at the time 
these drifts, supposed to be of the paloeolithic age, became the 
common sepulchre of those " primitive men," as well as " the 
rough chipped arrows and hatchets" which the new scientists 
consider of such an appallingly ancient origin — 200,000 years, 
according to the moderate calculation of Sir John Lubbock. 
Mr. Arcelin, it is true, adds that as the real and undoubted 
Aryan type was not positively ascertained, it could not be given 
as a fact resulting from these researches. But those Aryan 
characteristics, if not positively found, were, however, very 
nearly approximated to' in those remains. They could not be, 
consequently, the relics of barbarians and savages ; and it is a 
new proof of the worthlessness of the speculations indulged in 
by many modern scientists. 

We may, therefore, now proceed to the investigation of the 
origin and nature of primitive man, after having removed from 
our path the phantom evoked in the name of natural science. 
And yet it must not be called science, but mere perverse specu- 
lation, urged in the teeth of all history which teaches us that 
man is only of yesterday ; of geology which says that his remains 
are found only on the surface-crust of our globe, so that he cannot 
have appeared before the earth had reached the form and 
aspect it at present bears ; in spite of the distinct and positive 
statements of revelation, which ascribe to him an origin 
totally opposed to the wild and fanciful theory of an evolu- 
tionary process progressing through untold ages ; yet persists 
indeed, it is to be feared, precisely on account of those state- 
ments of revelation, in thrusting down the throats of men its far- 
fetched paradox, and in endeavoring to force them to believe 
that what is new must be called old, what is noble must be 
called mean, what is to last forever must be made perish- 



98 



GENTILISM. 



able, and sure to disappear with all the other shadows of h:3 
earth. 

It is hut comparatively little we were ahle to produce from 
this vast field of investigation, within the limits of a work of 
ordinary dimensions. But we think we may be allowed to 
indulge the hope that our induction has been sufficient to sat- 
isfy the reader that with the history of Hindostan, as well as that 
of Mesopotamia, have really begun the annals of mankind ; 
and, in proving what was their belief at first, we prove, in 
truth, what man has assented to from his very origin. 

• 

IV. 

We now proceed to make a few general observations on 
primitive barbarism. Hitherto, we have only discussed systems 
opposed to what we believe to be the truth ; and many consid- 
erations which have escaped us, as not lying directly in our 
line of thought, may here be introduced with advantage, with 
the view of adding additional cogency to what has already been 
advanced. 

Xow, first, as to the pretended long ages of unconsciousness 
for humanity, which, according to many writers of our age, 
have preceded historic time3, and suppose evidently the state 
rather of the brute than of barbarism, we have to say that no 
barbarians have ever been discovered without language, and, 
consequently, without real consciousness. And, as the writers 
we oppose, delight in finding analogies between the degraded 
tribes of our days and " primitive man," a prompt answer can 
be given them by referring to our existing savages. Kay, the 
tongues of many modern savage tribes are very complicated 
and rich in their construction, showing evidently their degene- 
racy from a higher state ; and in all, even in the agglutinative 
dialects of the Turanian nations, there is always a completeness 



SUPPOSED BAEBAEISM OP PEIMITIVE MAN. 99 



with respect to their wants, which assures us, indeed, that they 
are fully conscious and wide awake. Nay, should we try the 
expei^iment proposed by Max Miiller in the " Contemporary 
Review" (January, 1875), we should easily find that the im- 
perfection of the dialect of any nation does not arise from 
their individual barbarism or even inferiority. " We see, to- 
day, that the lowest of savages — men whose language is said 
to be no better than the clucking of hens or the twittering of 
birds, and who have been declared, in many respects, lower 
even than animals — possess this one specific characteristic, that 
if you take one of their babies, and bring it up in England, it 
will learn to speak as well as any English baby, while no 
amount of education will elicit any attempt at language from 
the highest animals, whether bipeds or quadrupeds. That 
faculty cannot have been formed by definite nervous structures, 
congenitally framed ; for we are told that both father and 
mother clucked like hens " (page 325). 

How can any one know that our ancestors have been at any 
time unconscious ? It is a purely gratuitous assertion ; and, as 
it rests on no basis of serious argument, it merits nothing more 
than a peremptory denial. Let prehistorians show, at least, 
that man can be a real man, and at the same time a dumb 
animal. The discovery of some few disinherited outcasts — to 
borrow a very appropriate French word — rambling in forests, 
and apparently denied the gift of speech, is no proof of this, 
but only a consequence of "their having been deprived from 
infancy of the companionship of other men, required absolutely ' 
by the social nature of the King of creation. But, as soon 
as they were received in the bosom of human society, of what- 
ever kind, their tongue was unloosened, and they began to 
speak. As to those born deaf and dumb, it is an evident abuse 
of language to call them dumb persons. They express their 
ideas ; they speak in reality, although only by signs ; they 
understand their friends, and their friends understand them. 



100 



GENTILISM. 



Yet it is, we think. Sir John Lubbock who brings seriously the 
fart of the deaf and dumb people as a proof that man can exist 
without language. 

But it is not the gift of speech alone which is required for 
true consciousness, and without which man remains a barbarian, 
or rather a brute. ' Writing, besides, they say, is necessary to 
transmit to posterity the consciousness of humanity ; and a 
human creature deprived of that art, has no adequate means of 
passing over to his children the events anterior to his own 
time. Tradition by speech is not sufficient, according to Sir 
John Lubbock, and many others. Thus in their estimation 
humanity lives only for the time being; each one is discon- 
nected from what went before, and what is to follow. "With- 
out writing, in fact, man remains in childhood mil his life ; and 
the tribal organizations of such infantine individuals cannot be 
composed but of barbarians, if not of savages. But is not 
writing a really modern invention ?' Even if it be true that 
the art of writing is " modern," tradition by speech is amply suf- 
ficient to transmit to posterity the important events of past ages, 
and with it alone man can be a civilized and noble being. An- 
tiquity attests with one voice to the retentive memory of early 
men ; and the practice of universal oral tradition was considered 
so sure, and at the same time so becoming for man in those re- 
markable ages, that even after writing was invented, the custom 
prevailed everywhere, to transmit orally, not only the long 
series of previous events, but even, the most considerable pro- 
ductions of primitive literature. It is known that the poems of 
Homer were for jnany ages preserved safely in the memory of 
Greece, and it was only the comparatively modern Pisistratus 
who thought of having them committed to parchment or per- 
haps papyrus. Many other facts of the kind, brought together 
by Lord Arundel, in his chapter " On the Tradition of the 
Human Bace," confirm this statement. But the list might be 
made much longer, as he does not say a word of the immense 



SUPPOSED BAKBAEISM OF PRIMITIVE MAN. 101 



production called the "Yedas," in Hindostan, which certainly 
remained for a long time in the memory of Brahmins, before 
being indited on lotus leaves. 'The Zends in Bactria, the Kings 
in China, the enormous compilation of the Buddhist works in the 
Far-East ; the later Greek Dionysiacs, Thebaids, Epigoniads, 
etc., mentioned by Coleridge in his " Creek Classic Poets," have 
most probably to be placed in the same category. Moses cer- 
tainly, when he wrote the Pentateuch, had only oral tradition 
to guide him, humanly speaking; the divine inspiration he 
enjoyed, having mainly for its object to prevent his falling into 
error in making the collection. The mind of men in those 
times was so capacious, that, almost without effort, their memory 
was stored with the sublimest productions of human genius ; 
and they seem to have delighted in imbuing their whole soul 
with the most elevated thoughts of those who had preceded 
them. In making an estimate of them we must adopt a ride 
directly opposite to that followed by the " prehistorians " of 
our days. They predicate of them all that is low, mean, nar- 
row in our actually existing savages. We must start from the 
other end of the series, and place them only " a little below the 
angels," as David says. 

Hence, even supposing Sir John Lubbock to be right in what 
he states of the " Tasmanians," who, " a few years after Cap- 
tain Cook had passed among them, had totally forgotten his ap- 
pearance — which was that of the first white man — on their 
island ;" an assertion, by the way, which Lord Arundel has 
victoriously disproved ; what has this to do with oral tradition 
as it existed primitively, as all antiquity shows it in actual ope- 
ration all over Asia and Europe ? But, now, is the art of 
writing modern ? And can mankind be said to have remained 
long ages without it, and, consequently, in a half-conscious 
state ? 

Sir George Rawlinson proves that, at least, some of the Tu- 
ranian nations, in the oldest historic times, had already acquired 



102 



GENTILISM. 



the art of writing. The Chaldseans of the most ancient known 
period were (.•ushites, and consequently Turani.uis. We possess 
many inscriptions of those early "ages. They are invariably on 
bricks ; either drawn on the fresh clay with the triangular point 
of a tool, or cast from a mould previously engraved. Rawlin- 
son proves that it was a kind of picture-writing on a par with 
that of the more recent Mexicans ; and the early Chaldseans are 
the first people known to history. 

Moses certainly wrote the Pentateuch, in spite of what Ger- 
man and English exegetists may say ; and Job has told us that 
even flint — in silioe — was used in his time to perpetuate 
the memory of events. Those great men had not degenerated 
so far. as to use the wretched paper on which we transcribe 
our thoughts ; they wanted theirs to remain as permanent as 
iinitrrid.l things can he. I Fence they chose the hardest rocks 
or the toughest metals to write them on. This, it is true, 
was perhaps an obstacle to having large " libraries " in their 
possession, although that of the kings of Assyria transported 
to England cannot be called a very small and unimportant one. 
They, however, preferred in general to make of their memory 
the store-house of their longest literary productions. 

If Moses wrote the Pentateuch, we may be sure that Egyp- 
tians of his time wrote, also, the already long history of their 
gods. And Ave know, from existing monuments, that, long 
before Moses, they practised writing either on granite, or on 
porphyry for great occasions ; keeping papyrus and other light 
materials for the ordinary uses of common life. But we shall 
treat this part of our subject more in detail by and by. 

The discussion of this subject at greater length is not re- 
quired in these pages. For the present, we close our remarks 
under this heading, with the observation, that picture-writing 
is not necessarily the sign of a half -barbarous nation. It can 
exist in union with a high culture, as in Mexico, as in an- 
cient Egypt, even as in the China of our day, which has not yet 



SUPPOSED BAEBAEISM OP PEIMITIVE MAN. 103 



adopted our alphabet. That may be said of writing which has 
already been proved of the " stone," " bronze," and " iron " 
ages. All kinds can exist together, even in the same nation. 
Without it, a people can still enjoy a high moral elevation; 
although we do not pretend that it is not a powerful help for 
real and sound development. In our times, it is far more im- 
portant than in the first ages of the world. Our minds are oc- 
cupied with so many different objects of thought; we are so 
little trained to the consideration of a single subject abstracted- 
ly from any other, and we impose so little restraint on our restless 
imagination, that writing seems to be absolutely required to fix 
the wandering faculties of our soul. Our memory, especially, 
is too often unreliable and unsafe. It was not so in the first 
ages of mankind. A few great thoughts occupied wholly the 
minds of men ; they were accustomed to reflect deeply on the 
limited subjects of their mental activity ; thus everything pre- 
sented to their intellectual faculties became deeply impressed, 
and remained permanently in their souls as a spiritual treasure, 
always full and always open. This alone can explain the surprising 
fact of the richness and depth of their languages, and the im- 
mense amount of inventions which go back certainly to the 
cradle of mankind. 

Finally, the difference of races, which appear from the be- 
ginning as distinct as they are now, show that universal barba- 
rism is not the starting-point of humanity. We see, at the very 
origin of nations, ITindostan and Central Asia occupied by very 
superior races whose mental elevation astonishes the modern 
student, of which many examples will hereafter come under 
our observation ; and, at the same time, by low and degraded 
tribes, called in the laws of Menu chandalas, in our age pariahs, 
co-existing with the others, and remaining, even to our very days, 
without rising in the social scale. We see in Egypt the same 
phenomenon of a ruling race, great in philosophy, in religion, 
in art ; and, side by side, the debased negro appearing on the 



104 



GENTILISM. 



monuments still in existence, with all the signs of degeneracy 
and enslavement which are, to this day, his share. We see the 
same variety and antagonism of races without numher, in Iran, 
in Arabia, in Syria; and later on in Greece, Italy, and the rest 
of Europe. Could the system of Sir John Lubbock and his 
friends be confuted more pointedly by any argument, than it is 
by all these facts of the primitive ages ? What was the primary 
and original cause of this strange difference of races ? We can- 
not know. We only are sure that the human species was one 
in spite of all those divergences. It does not seem probable 
that they arose one from the other, although, as Dr. Prichard 
has shown conclusively in his great work on the " Physical His- 
tory of Mankind," they everywhere pass from one to the other 
by almost insensible gradations, so that the unity of mankind 
is never contradicted by the net-work of their variations. Last- 
ly, they are so slow in changing, that often the greatest period 
of time makes scarcely an impression upon them. We may re- 
peat the question : What has been the primary cause of the differ- 
ence of races among men ? No one can know positively. Either 
the opinion of De Maistre, quoted above, is the true one, or there 
must have been, at the origin of mankind, a far superior action 
of exterior circumstances on man than there is at the present 
time, when races change so slowly and so imperceptibly. If 
this last hypothesis is the right one, then that happened moral- 
ly and physically for human kind, which took place in the physi- 
cal order for the exterior covering of our globe. For, no intelli- 
gent geologist can admit, that the alterations of its surface could 
be always as slow and imperceptible as they now appear to be. 

But meanwhile, at all times, the passage of any race from a 
lower point to a higher one is of the greatest difficulty. It is 
to us a matter of wonder to hear "prehistorians" talk, when 
they speak of it as if it was the " law of the moral universe." 
In North America, however, we meet with the real difficulty 
every day. Is it not known, nay, demonstrated, after so 



SUPPOSED BAEBARISM OF PRIMITIVE MAN. 105 



many experiments, that it is almost impossible to reclaim the 
red man, with all the means of culture which surround him ? 
Is not the same true of many tribes of Africa, of Polynesia, of 
South America ? And, if in human history, many nations have 
effectually passed, on many occasions, from a low degree of 
culture to a higher one, to the highest, in fact, in some excep- 
tionable cases — have they not invariably been helped up to it 
at least at the beginning of the struggle, and a long time per- 
haps of their national existence? The Hellenes, one of the 
most remarkable examples of it, thus had certainly received a 
great deal at first from the anterior civilization of Hindostan 
and Egypt. The same was the case with the Romans with re- 
spect to the Etruscans and the Hellenes. The northern barba- 
rians who destroyed the Roman Empire possessed, certainly, in 
their intimate nature, some germ deposited there by their 
long-forgotten ancestors of Central Asia — germs developed with 
infinite pains by Christianity, which first humanized and after- 
ward civilized them. 

Thus the self-educating principle is seen nowhere in history. 
And on this account, we presume, the " prehistorians " set 
themselves, from the start, in fierce opposition to history and 
tradition. We cannot do this. We propose, on the contrary, 
to consult them with all the zeal of ardent inquirers, bent on 
discovering the mystery of Isis by raising her veil. 



CHAPTER III. 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION OBSCURED OR DESTROYED BY PANTHEISM OR 
POLYTHEISM IN H IN DOST AN. 

The best directed efforts to ascertain the origin of man, or 
primeval religion, by the facts of geology or zoology, can at 
best only result in more or less probable conjectures. The 
gradual development of the globe, even, has not been yet 
proved by so many arduous mental labors ; for scientists are 
not agreed about many important details. And, in the classifi- 
cation of organized beings, opinions are almost as various as 
individuals, flow can we hope to come to a more satisfactory 
conclusion with respect to man and his religions feelings, when 
the remains we have of him are so scanty, and their surround- 
ings so problematical ? History and the cognate sciences are 
much more likely to tell us the truth on those important sub- 
jects. We have at least in them positive records, which speak 
for themselves, and place directly the men of old in intimate 
communication with us. Particularly since philology has made 
60 many gigantic strides of late years on a ground formerly 
closed, in appearance at least, against the most persevering stu- 
dent. Its former field, confined to the Latin and Greek lan- 
guages, with a smattering of the Semitic tongues — Hebrew, 
Syriae, and Arabic — has been extended so as to include, not 
only the Sanscrit and the Egyptian, but even the Turanian 
idioms, with their mere agglutinative process and most primi- 
tive grammars. Champollion has given us the key of the 
hieroglyphs ; and the cuneiform inscriptions of every shape 
have now scarcely any mystery for our antiquarians. The 
Cushite tongue, spoken by the near successors of the builders 
(106) 



ABORIGINAL EELIGION IN HINDOSTAN. 107 

of Babel, nay, engraved on the very bricks which remain of 
it, reveals its meaning to the scientific academician of London 
or Paris ; and the amulet of the negro, the totem of the red 
Indian, are no more mere objects of wonder or pity, but speak 
to the understanding of our Schoolcrafts or Catlins. 

And not only the writing of man, but his manual work even, 
is often as eloquent as language to transmit his ideas and 
social customs to a later age. At this very moment the his- 
tory of Egypt is being reconstructed from its monuments. 
Hundreds of ardent explorers are busy examining them, un- 
earthing them, measuring their vast size, and reproducing on 
paper, by the art of the engraver, their grand proportions and 
gigantic surroundings. On pyramids, obelisks, walls, colossal 
statues, signs no longer mysterious indicate what happened 
thousands of years ago ; and the former lists of Manetho are 
from them reeomposed, combined, and made at last to agree. 
The archaeologist has found likewise the means of judging of 
antiquity by the mere aspect of a monument, and the historical 
succession of former times is graphically represented by a sim- 
ple series of architectural drawings. 

Enriched with all these precious fruits of an arduous, but in 
the end pleasing and useful study, the exact and impartial his- 
torian can at last pronounce, without fear of great error, the 
verdict of truth on the most ancient ages. We are at least in 
much less danger of being misinformed and deceived ; no longer 
are we limited to the untrustworthiness of feeble guesses, and 
it is the consciousness of this invaluable truth which inspires 
us, when we open the noble books where all this learning is 
condensed. The great works of Wilkinson, Max Miiller, the 
two Rawlinsons, the Sanscrit scholars of India, and many 
others in the English language ; those of Spiegel, Hang, etc., in 
the German ; the writings of Champollion, Burnouf, Lenor- 
mant, Comte de Rouge, and others in French ; those of Rosel- 
liui, etc., in Italian, are much more likely to be of real service 



108 



GENTILISM. 



* 



to us in our Investigations into the origin of human society, 
than all the possible speculations on the rough stone imple- 
ments of France, Belgium, and England, added to the nume- 
rous observations and experiments on hybridism and natural 
selection. 

Moreover, -when we consider that the more historical studies 
progress, the more profane learning becomes reconciled to our 
Bacred records, that is, to the most ancient writings in existence, 
we find in this reflection a new motive of assurance, which is 
absolutely wanting whenever a new theory suggests conclusions 
in opposition to our Holy Scriptures. For, independently of 
Christian faith, if we follow only the dictates of reason, the 
books which form our Bible ought to be considered as of great 
weight merely as historical records of the past ; and whatever 
new discovery in science, or intellectual research of any kind, 
igrees with them, finds in this agreement a corroboration and 
a strong support ; whilst on the contrary whatever new specula- 
tion opens a prospect of antagonism to them, ought by this 
very fact to become an object of suspicion and distrust. 



I. 

If, then, God spoke in the beginning to mankind, whose 
primitive religion must thus have been a pure monotheism ; if 
man did not begin by the savage state, but enjoyed high moral 
prerogatives at his first entrance into the world ; as we believe 
modern theories on the origin of our species are really founded 
on false suppositions or on mere conjectures, primeval history 
must say something of that golden age, and show the idea of 
one eternal, infinite, all-powerful God, existing in the tradi- 
tions of mankind, previous to all polytheistic errors. 

A hundred years ago this could not have been asserted. A 
true knowledge of antiquity did not then exist ; and it is only 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION IN HINDOSTAN. 109 



in our times, quite recently, indeed, that the veil covering the 
infancy of the human race begins to be raised, independently 
of the infallible Hebrew and Christian records. 

The question, however, of the introduction of polytheism is, 
no doubt, not unattended with difficulties. Nevertheless, yet, 
on the whole, the universal voice of history in that regard is so 
precise, that the conclusion may be said to amount almost to 
demonstration. 

For us, Christians, the truth is known, since the word of Cod 
has revealed it to us ; and we place it far above the oldest In- 
dian, Persian, or Egyptian pronouncements. And yet, if we 
discover that it is supported by these, our previous faith re- 
ceives a subsequent confirmation of no mean value. We, there- 
fore, begin by quoting the simple statement contained in the 
Book of Wisdom on the origin of idolatry. And some of our 
readers may be afterwards surprised to find, that the ascer- 
tained history of Hindostan, Egypt, Creece, and other countries, 
is, after all, the strict fulfilment of a single chapter of the Old 
Testament. It is the thirteenth chapter of Wisdom, which first 
makes a most remarkable distinction between those "who wor- 
shipped the works of God " — Nature — and those who " adored 
the works of man" — Idols. What took place, historically, 
everywhere on earth, in the declension from monotheism to pan- 
theism, and from this last to strict idolatry, could not be more 
clearly expressed : Men first had • received " the knowledge of 
God ;" but later, " by the good things that are seen, they could 
not understand Him, that is ; neither by attending to the works 
have they acknowledged who was the workman. But they 
have imagined either the fire, or the wind, or the swift air, or 
the circle of the stars, or the great water, or the sun and moon, 
to be the gods that rule the world : with whose beauty, if they, 
being delighted, took them to be gods, let them know how 
much the Lord of them is more beautiful ; for the first author 
of beauty made all those things. Or if they admired their 



110 



GENTILISM. 



power and their effects, let them understand by them that lie 
that made them is mightier than they." 

Divine revelation tells us, in these few words, precisely 
w hat happened, according to well-ascertained history. After a 
period of universal monotheism, the nations began to worship 
'• the works of God," and fell generally into a broad pantheism. 
They took subsequently a second step, perfectly well marked, 
later on, in ITindostan, Central Asia, Egypt, Greece, etc. ; a step 
originating everywhere in the imagination of poets, material- 
izing God, bringing Ilim down to human nature and weakness, 
and finally idealizing and deifying His supposed representa- 
tions in statuary and painting. 

The author of the Book of Wisdom describes this last down- 
ward step toward pure idolatry, in the second part of his thir- 
teenth chapter, and the beginning of the fourteenth. And we 
shall now proceed to place the reader in possession of historical 
facts which will satisfy him of the faithfulness of the descrip- 
tion by what actually took place in history. The text itself : 
" If a carpenter hath cut down in the woods a tree," etc., need 
not be quoted as even modem apologues have made it familiar 
to everybody. 

n. 

There is, first, a general remark, not without force certainly, 
which will naturally introduce the subject. It is this: No one 
can refuse to admit that monotheism always existed among the 
Hebrews, from the time of the patriarchs downward, and that 
the various attempts to introduce idolatry among them were 
always successfully repressed. So that the nation continued 
throughout its history monotheistic. This high, intelligent 
worship, supposing in man an advanced state of knowledge 
and civilization, incompatible certainly with barbarism — con- 
sequently never expected to be found in savage tribes, in a state 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION" IN HINDOSTAN. Ill 



of society such as the Iranian race is fancied by modem the- 
orists to have invariably presented at its cradle — was certainly 
the religion of the Hebrew race from its great progenitor, 
Abraham. At the same epoch, likewise, many noble traditions 
about creation, the origin of moral evil, the hope of better 
things ; including a moral code worthy of God and of man, and 
a firm belief in Divine Providence: — that is, an infinite, benevo- 
lent Power far above all " the forces of nature " — these tradi- 
tions, we say, must have been likewise, owing to the unity of 
the human species, the heirloom of other nations existing at 
that time in the same tribal state. Now, besides what we 
know of the Canaanite Melehisedeeh, of the Arabian Job, and 
a little later of the Cushite Balaam, etc., besides all tbese, the 
people of the whole of Hindostan, and of Central Asia at the 
north of it, was living precisely in the same conditions, in the 
same original state of clanship, to which we alluded in our first 
chapter. But what is more, at this present time when their 
primitive books can be well understood, we are sure that those 
numerous tribes enjoyed the privilege of a pure and exalted 
monotheism, untainted, as yet,*not only by the gross idolatry 
which now prevails in those unfortunate countries, but even by 
the grand and all-absorbing pantheism by which it was too soon 
invaded. 

We say the whole of Hindostan, and Central Asia at the 

north of it: because it is now demonstrated that this was the 

native country of that old, rich Sanscrit language in which the 

three first Yedas were written, as well as the Zends, namely : 

the books attributed to Zoroaster. Strabo remarked it as a 

fact of his own time, when Hindoo civilization was already on 

the wane : " The name of Ariana is extended so as to include 

some parts of Persia, Media, Bactria, and Sogdiana in the 

north ; for these nations speak nearly the same language." 

(Book xv., c. xi., § 8). 

Bactria and Sogdiana, therefore, the eastern part of what we 
9 



112 



GENTILISM. 



call Persia, and northern half of India, is the great country 
which ought to attract our attention. But as, owing to some 
unfortunate mistakes of former learned and well-intentioned 
critics, which have long delayed the discovery of the whole 
truth with regard to the antiquity of the Zends, it has become 
an established custom to consider the three first Vedas as exclu- 
sively Hindoo, and the Zend-Avesta as exclusively Persian, when 
both were Aryan books, previous to the division of the people ; 
we propose to take an historical survey of those countries apart ; 
and to study, one after the other, their tribal system, and the 
real primitive doctrines of their books. We shall thus ascer- 
tain the identity of their origin, as well as the primeval religion 
and social life of the tribes. 

in. 

First, then, their civil and social condition. 

"When Alexander reached the Indus and invaded the country 
beyond, he found himself in what we now call the Btmjaub, 
and was smprised to meet, no^the monarch of a great empire, 
but the petty chieftains of many a tribe of warriors, the ances- 
tors, it is jow believed, of the modern Rajpoots. The name of 
the most valiant of them was Poros — in the Hindoo language it 
must have been Puru. jSearchus, the commander of the Macedo- 
nian fleet, Onqsieritus, an amateur historian who followed Alex- 
ander, Megasthenes and Deimachus, sent later as ambassadors 
to the Head-Sovereign of India, at Palibothra on the Ganges, 
all spoke in their works, now lost, except that of the first, of an 
immense number of nations living in that vast country, each of 
them governed by a Icing in the Greek language, by a chieftain 
in our own, by a rajah in the modern Hindoo dialect. Strabo, 
(Book xv., c. 1., § 3), says that " Writers affirm that the Mace- 
donians conquered nine nations between the Hydaspes and 
the Hypanis (now called the Behul and the Beas), and obtained 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION IN HINDOSTAN. 



113 



possession of five hundred cities." Nearchus, likewise, in sail- 
ing down the Indus to its mouth, met with many nations in- 
habiting the countries of Porticanus and Musicanus, as he calls 
them. Thus, also, Arrian and Ptolemy describe the western 
part of the Deccan exactly as it appeared to the Portuguese 
fifteen hundred years later. 

It is supposed that Alexander with his army, advanced into 
the interior of the country only about half-way between the 
Indus and the Ganges ; but he heard of a great empire whose 
capital, called Palibothra, was built on this last-named river. 
Megasthenes later on visited it, and many details of his narra- 
tive, now lost, have been preserved by Strabo, Pliny, Arrian, 
and others. What was then the great empire of the Prasii ? 
For such was the name it bore. 

First, Strabo remarks, that " the king," besides his indi- 
vidual name, had always the surname of " Palibothrus," and he 
adds : " Such also is the custom among the Parthians ; for all 
have the name ' Arsacse,' although each has his peculiar name 
of Orodes, Phraates," etc. Therefore, the " Emperor of the 
Prasii " was the head of a great clan called Palibothrus. We 
shall have the same remark to make of the tribe of the " Achse- 
menidse " in Persia. 

Secondly, although Alexander heard of the empire of Prasii 
as the most powerful in India, yet it could not have extended 
over the whole country ; since we know the west was altogether 
out of his control ; and, on the south-east, the country of the 
Gangarides marked its boundary. It did not, therefore, in- 
clude modern Bengal. In fact, it comprised merely modern 
Behar, with some adjacent provinces. 

But even in that limited extent, it was nothing like a cen- 
tralized government ; for, from the whole social state of the 
country at the time, it is fair to conclude that the monarch at 
the head of it was only the suzerain of a great number of 
almost independent chieftains or rajahs. 



1U 



GENTILISM. 



We liave already remarked that tiie social or political life of 
mankind began by clanship. It now appears that in India, 
that state of things continued to exist as far down as the time 
of Alexander the Great. We shall see that to a great extent it 
has continued to our days. 

But were all those tribes, or nations, as they are called by 
the historians of the times, real clans ; so that all may be said 
to have been " blood relations V It is difficult, or rather im- 
possible, to answer with certainty such a question. The learned 
men, even of the age of Alexander, even of the Augustan age, 
which followed, knew nothing of what is called now " Social 
Science." Julius Caesar, after a ten years' residence in Celtic 
Gaul, had not the least idea of the clan system. Authors, 
then, attached a great importance to the physical description 
of foreign countries, to the exterior peculiarities of the people 
inhabiting them, to their outward manners and customs, to 
their literary culture, or the reverse. They generally passed very 
lightly over the real constitution of their government, and the 
secular institutions which really ruled them, but which require 
considerable philosophical acumen for their analysis and expo- 
sition. "We have, therefore, often to trust to a few incidental 
pi liases which seem to have escaped writers almost uncon- 
sciously, and which help a modern reader to an insight into the 
political and social institutions of those people, about which 
such writers as those we have named did not concern them- 
selves. 

The few words of Strabo on the name " Palibothrus," are of 
that character. But we are not confined to their testimony in 
the present case. If the men who then composed the tribes 
were not blood relations in the same sense as the Celtic, Jew- 
ish, or Arabian septs, they had certainly been so originally. 
And a sure indication of it was that everything in their social 
organization was determined by strict marriage-rules. It may 
be said that one-half at least of the laws of Menu have for 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION IN IIINDOSTAN. 



115 



their object to regulate marriage relations, by establishing the 
strictest rules with respect to the bonds of consanguinity, and the 
innumerable consequences which may follow with respect to 
purity of blood or the reverse. But, in liindostan, this strict 
. marriage-relationship took the shape of castes, not of clans ; 
not, however, from the beginning, not from Vedic times. At 
the origin of the system a distinction had been established 
among brothers, which was to continue for all time to come. 
Three classes — not yet castes, since the laws of Menu do not 
speak of them — had been admitted to be pure : the Brahmins, 
the Kshastriyas, and the Vaisyas ; the fourth, the class of the 
Sudras, was declared impure, not regenerated. Their more 
fortunate brethren had been twice born, and could alone wear 
the thread of regeneration. What was the original cause of 
these strange distinctions ? At what time were they intro- 
duced ? ~No one can tell. And the only explanation given by 
the Hindoos, is, that the first class was born of the mouth of 
Brahma ; the second of his arm ; the third of his thigh, and the 
last of his feet. The chandalas, pariahs, etc., did not belong 
to the nation ; they were aliens, and became outcasts. 

But it is a fact now perfectly well established, that the opin- 
ion of Greek and Latin writers who pretend that marriage 
was absolutely forbidden between, the various classes, so as to 
be really impossible, is a mistaken one ; and that, at the very 
origin of the nation, when the Yedas and the laws of Menu were 
written, nothing was so common as those inter-marriages. All 
the consequences of them were mere disabilities, some of them 
not of a very grave character, and not carrying with them any * 
stain or " impurity," when such unions took place between the 
three first castes. That cases of the kind happened frequently 
even in the most ancient times, results clearly from many pas- 
sages of the laws of Menu, where the reader may find striking and 
extremely interesting examples of them all through the book, 
but chiefly in the whole tenth chapter : on the mixed classes. 



116 



GENTILISM. 



There is 110 doubt that the numerous mixed castes mentioned 
by various authors who, even in our age, cannot agree as to their 
number, and increase it sometimes indefinitely, came from the 
facility left to individuals to choose their wives in inferior 
or superior castes. 

This alone shows the importance that was ascribed to blood- 
relationship in India. It may be said to have ruled everything 
in the country, as it did in the old Celtic nations. But the 
result was very different, as its action differed so considerably. 
Hence, Heeren could say, in his great work on India, Chapter 
II. (the underlines are ours) : " The distinctions of castes, 
though a fundamental principle of the constitution itself, at 
least, in the three superior ones, is based upon the organization 
iif i'.intilirs. The desire of perpetuating the memorial of his 
house faj heirs male, is, to a Hindoo, one of the most lively 
importance ; and the want of sons is considered a misfortune 

only to be remedied by adoption We have already seen 

what frequent use the Indian poets have made of this national 
peculiarity ; and how, both in the epic poem and in the drama, 
the preservation of a male child is often the main point on 
which the action of the piece turns." 

This remarkable difference between the tribal system of 
Hindostan, and that of other primitive nations, being kept 
in view, we musl come to the numerous points of agreement 
between both ; so numerous, indeed, that the conclusion forces 
itself upon the mind, that both belonged evidently to tl e 
venerable patriarchal period. We speak of the uniformity of 
institutions, not of the character of the two peoples, which 
are altogether different. 

First, then, as to the village, or, rather, township. This uni- 
versal social and civil element in India, which bears to-day 
exactly the features it had three or four thousand j 7 ears ago, is, 
in reality, a small clan ; with its head called the jootail, who, 
superintending the affairs of the community, settling disputes, 



ABOKIGLNAL KELIGIOJ5T IN HINDOSTAK. llf 



attends to the police and collection of taxes, and is the exact 
reproduction of the small chieftain and brehon judge ; with 
the Brahmin priest and astrologer, another name for the old 
Druid and Ollamh ; with its poet, rhapsodist, and schoolmaster, 
instead of the shanachy and the file; with their several other 
officers, whose counterparts could be found easily in the old 
Celtic septs. And to render the sinxilarity more perfect, all 
these functionaries were paid in the same manner, either in 
land or in a certain quantity of grain furnished by the agri- 
culturists of the community. 

According to an evidently well-informed author, quoted, 
without name, in " Chambers' Encyclopaedia" (Lippincott's ed., 
1872) : " Under this simple form of municipal government, 
the inhabitants of the country have lived from time imme- 
morial. The boundaries of the village have been but seldom 
altered ; and though the villages themselves have been some- 
times injured, and even desolated by war, famine, and disease, 
the same name of the township, the same limits, and even the 
same families have continued for ages. The inhabitants give 
themselves no trouble about the breaking up or division of 
kingdoms. So long as the village remains entire, they care 
not to what power it is transferred, or to' what sovereign 
it devolves. Its internal economy remains unchanged ; the 
potail is still the head inhabitant, and still acts as the petty 
judge and magistrate, and collector, or renter of the village." 

Heeren proves that these strange organizations have existed 
in India as far back as the time of Menu, whose laws spoke of 
them, probably, 1,500 years before Christ. He says : " The 
whole seems to have originated in the partial organization 
of isolated communities, which, with their respective head- 
men, might be considered as so many petty States ; and this 
fundamental institution still continued to subsist even when 
several of these townships or communities were united under 
the dominion of one Rajah, and thus formed a part of a larger 



118 GENTILISM. 

State or kingdom " — we should say tribe. " In the northern 
parts of India, particularly near the Ganges, where the irrup- 
tions of foreign conquerors succeeded each other like the 
waves of the ocean, all traces of the primitive form must 
have long since been obliterated ; but in tbe southernmost 
division of the peninsula, in Mysore and Malabar, etc., which 
were least of all exposed to foreign invasions, they are still in 
existence at the present day." 

We have thus, under our own eyes, many precious remnants 
of a primitive civilization, whicb has disappeared everywhere 
else, and which calls to our remembrance the heroic times 
anterior to the formation of great monarchies and republics.* 

IY. 

We may now treat briefly of those simple and pure manners, 
untainted yet with idolatry of any kind, and elevated by the 
doctrines of the holiest and highest monotheism. 

As late as the expedition of Alexander, Onesicritus, accord- 
ing to Strabo (Book xv., ch. 1, § 34), had remarked this in 
particular of the tribes living near the mouth of the Indus 
river. They were governed by chiefs whom he calls Porti- 
canus and Musicanus — their Hindoo names are, no doubt, 
strangely disfigured. " The inhabitants of that country," he 
says, " are long-lived, and that life is protracted to the age of 
130 years; they are temperate in their habits, and healthy; 
although their country produces everything in abundance. The - ' 
following are their peculiarities : to have a kind of Lacedoemo- 

* The similarity of institutions in old Hindostan and in tlie former 
Celtic countries is so striking, and the consideration .of it is so important 
with respect lo the primitive state of mankind, which is now the object 
of our investigation, that we give a more extensive sketch of it ia an 
Ajtyendix at the end of this volume. 



ABORIGINAL BELIGIOlf EST HINDOSTAN. 119 



nian common meal, which they partake of in common. Their 
food consists of what is taken in the chase. They make no use 
of gold nor of silver, although they have mines of these metals. 
Instead of slaves, they employ youths in the flower of their age. 

They study no science with attention but that of medicine 

There is no process of law among them but against murder and 
outrage." 

Megasthenes, speaking of the Prasii, living far down on the 
Ganges, at a great distance from the just-mentioned tribes, 
says : " Charmers go about the country, and are supposed to 
cure wound's made by serpents. This seems to comprise nearly 
their whole art of medicine, for diseases are not frequent 
among them, which is owing to their frugal manner of life, 
and to the absence of wine ; whenever diseases do appear, they 
are treated by the sophistce (or wise men)." "With respect to 
the "absence of wine," we shall see clirectly what was their 
"homa," or " soma," which replaced it. 

It seems, therefore, that already Brahmins practised the heal- 
ing art as they do now ; whilst formerly the law of Menu for- 
bid them to have anything to do with physicians, who ought to 
be considered, according to that code, as a degraded class, im- 
pure, it seems, from their barbarous surgical operations, etc. 

Strabo says, again, (same chapter, § 53) : " All the Hindoos 
are frugal in their mode of life, especially in camp. They do 
not tolerate useless and undisciplined multitudes, and con- 
sequently observe good order. Theft is very rare among them. 
Megasthenes, who was in the camp of Sandracottus, which con- 
sisted of . 400,000 men, did not witness on any day theft re- 
ported, which exceeded the sum of two hundred drachmge, 
and this among a people who have no written laws, who are 
ignorant even of writing, and regulate everything by memory." 
(We shall soon see that Megasthenes was mistaken ; Sanscrit lit- 
erature at that very time was most flourishing). " They are, how- 
ever, happy on account of their simple manners and frugal ways 



120 



GENTILISM. 



of life. They never drink wine but at sacrifices.* Their beve- 
rage is made from rice instead of barley, and their food consists 
for the most part of rice pottage. The simplicity of their laws 
appears from their not having many law-suits. They have no 
-nils respecting pledges and deposits, nor do they require wit- 
nesses or seals, but confide in one another. Then* houses and 
property are unguarded. These things denote temperance and 
sobriety." 

If such was the aspect of Hindustan three or four centuries 
before Christ, what must it have been in those early ages of the 
Vcdas and the laws of Menu? For all that country the de- 
generacy of man, and of human institutions, is more visible 
probably than in any other known region of the globe, hi 
this age something remains yet of those primitive maimers ; but 
how much allied with vices then unknown, chiefly with respect 
to purity of morals and chastity ? Nothing can show better 
the advanced state of morality — that is, its real and genuine 
purity — than the various enactments of the code of Menu on 
marriage, and the situation of woman in the family. An ab- 
stract of them, put in order and published, would be redolent 
of the golden age of the Hebrew patriarchs, and show at once 
how mankind has truly degenerated from the primeval state of 
society. We can merely quote a few (chap, ix., 45) : " Then 
only is man perfect, when he consists of three persons united, 
his wife, himself, and his son ; and thus have learned Brahmins 
announced this maxim : ' The husband is even one person with 
his wife ;' " (and 46) : " [Neither by sale nor desertion can a wife 
be released from her husband ; thus we fully acknowledge the 

* The wine of which Megasthenes speaks is the "homa," or "soma," 
made of fermented rice, not of barley; the Vedas speak often of it, and 
call it. sometimes vinas, vinum, although not made from the grape; but 
the sacred character these old and venerable books give to it, forbid alto- 
gether the supposition which many modern writers on Hindooism in- 
dulge in on the subject. To listen to them one might imagine that there 
was no sacrifice in Hindostan without the grossest intoxication ; and the 



ABORIGINAL KELIGIOJST IK HHSTDOSTAIST. 121 



law enacted of old by the Lord of creatures." Had they read 
the book which says : erunt duo in came una ? 

The code said, it is true (chap, vi., 148) : " In childhood 
must a female be dependent on her father ; in youth, on her 
husband ; her lord being dead, on her sons." And this 
last provision of the law contained a germ of wrong which 
produced in Hindostan that frightful state of oppression 
under which women live. But in those primitive times was 
the woman a slave ? was the simple girl a slave ? read (chap, 
ix., 88) : a To an excellent and handsome youth of the same 
class, let every man give his daughter in marriage according 
to law." (89) : " But it is better that the damsel, though 
marriageable, should stay at home till her death, than that 
he should ever give her to a bridegroom void of excellent 
qualities." (90) : " Three years let a damsel wait though she 
is marriageable; but after that term, let her choose for herself 
a bridegroom of equal rank." (91): "If, not being given in 
marriage, she choose her bridegroom, neither she, nor the youth 
chosen, commits any offence." 

Then follow many enactments full of the true sense of right 
and propriety, and which forbid any man to sell his daughter, 
under the pretext of gratuity : " Since a father," says the law, 
" who takes a fee on that occasion tacitly sells his daughter." 
(100) : " Never, even in former creations, have we heard the 
virtuous approve the tacit sale of a daughter for a price, under 
the name of a nuptial gratuity." (101) : " Let mutual fidelity 
continue til death : this, in few words, may be considered as 
the supreme law between husband and wife." 

excesses of the Scandinavians in their religious festivals appear a mere 
copy of those of the Hindoos. Nothing more untrue and more in disac- 
cord with all we know of former India could be imagined, and the long 
quotation from Megasthenes in the fifteenth chapter of Strabo's Geogra- 
phy, is a sufficient refutation of it. What he says of the Brahmins ought 
to be read attentively. 



122 



GENTILISM. 



Read, again, the following, and say if there can be a 
brighter picture of a household even in Christian countries? 
(Chap, v., 149) : " Never let the wife wish to separate herself 
from her father, her husband, or her sons: for, by a separation 
from them she exposes both families to contempt." (150) : 
" She must always live with a cheerful temper, with good man- 
agement in the affairs of the house, with great care of the 
household furniture, and with a frugal hand in all her expenses." 
(151): " Him to whom her father has given her, or her bro- 
ther with the paternal assent, let her obsecpiiously honor while 
he lives ; and when he dies, let her never forget him." 

There is something so puie, so elevated, so truly refined in 
many passages of that venerable legislation, that some modem 
writers have pretended that it was never enforced ; and that its 
author merely intended to publish a Utopia, as the Republic of 
Plato. Unfortunately for that opinion, the Hindoos have 
always taken the book to be a serious production, and a real 
law to which the nation has owned obedience for many ages. 
If, gradually, the primitive purity with which it is invested 
grew dim, and was replaced by a corrupt gloss, which led to 
the mass of depravity which disgraces modern Ilindostan, it is 
only a new proof that the doctrine of the indefinite perfectibil- 
ity of mankind is a mere delusion, and that in general the pro- 
gress since the beginning has been backward. 

But we have not yet done with this code. The marital relations 
as expressed in it, are those of a tridy moral and chaste people, 
and would scarcely be understood in the present age. We will 
not recite the texts imposing the various times of conjugal ab- 
stinence, which in our days would appear truly impracticable 
and impossible ; but we must quote a few passages calculated 
to give us a true idea of the real purity and refinement of patri- 
archal times. (Chap, iv., 43) : " Let the husband neither eat with 
his wife, nor look to her eating, nor sneezing, or yawning, or 
sitting* carelessly at her ease." (44) : " Nor let a Brahmin 



ABOEIGINAL EELIGION IN HESTDOSTAjST. 



123 



beliold her setting off her eyes with black powder, or scenting 
herself with essences, or bringing forth a child. (Chap, ix., 77) : 
" For a whole year let a husband bear with his wife who treats 
him with aversion ; but after a year let him deprive her of her 
separate property, and cease to cohabit with her." 

One particular feature, common to Hindostan, and to other 
patriarchal countries, we must not pass by without notice ; we 
mean polygamy, which the law of Menu permitted within cer- 
tain limits. But we prefer to quote a few judicious remarks 
of Heeren on the subject : " The world of India, both as it 
exists in the fanciful descriptions of poetry, as well as in the 
sober realities of actual life, presents us with a sufficient num- 
ber of characteristic traits to show that monogamy is the prev- 
alent custom From all attending circumstances we 

may reasonably conclude , that polygamy among the princes and 
great men was the consequence of luxury and fashion ; but 
that in general, wherever it existed among the higher classes, 
it was principally founded on the necessity of preserving fam- 
ilies ; and, moreover, on the religious precept which allowed a 
man to marry one or more additional wives, on account of the 
sterility of the first. The members of the fourth caste, the 
Sudras, were only permitted to have one wife, taken exclu- 
sively from their own class." Is not this a common feature in 
the patriarchal period ? 

But besides the remarkable spectacle of purity offered by 
the primitive Hindoo code with respect to conjugal relations, 
there are other prescriptions which concern unmarried people, 
and show a state of morals almost unknown on earth, except at 
the very origin of human society. We Avill quote only a text 
or two. (Chap, ii., 212) : " A student must not greet a young 
wife of his preceptor, even by the ceremony of touching her 
feet, if he have completed his twentieth year, or can distin- 
guish virtue from vice." This text alone surpasses our concep- 
tion of human native purity. But it is clear, and it means 



124 



GENTILISM. 



that in those primitive ages, in the burning climate of ITinclo- 
stan, the age of twenty-one years was usually reached before the 
time of moral clanger from female seduction arrived. But if 
the period of safety from temptation extended so far, let the 
reader ponder on the preservatives recommended to men of 
mature age in the following (215) : "Let not a man sit in a 
secpiestered place with his nearest female relations : the assem- 
blage of corporeal organs is powerful enough to snatch wisdom 
from the wise." 

The previous details suffice to give an idea of the exalted 
type of virtue presented by our fallen humanity in those dis- 
tant times, so near the origin of mankind ; a virtue which, on the 
hypothesis of the evolutionists, would be impossible, on account 
of the imagined barbarism of our primeval state, but natural 
enough to those who have been informed by revelation. The 
reader will now not be surprised to learn that doctrines were 
promulgated and firmly believed in at the same epoch, which 
far transcend all the most solemn teaching of the greatest pbi- 
losophers who flourished in the following ages ; and which yield 
only to the sublime and excaiisitely refined teachings of In- 
carnate Wisdom, who, through human lips, revealed a code 
of morality more exalted and more explicit than those glorious 
strains of human intellectual harmony. The pure monotheism 
of the old inhabitants of Ilindostan will appear consequently 
in agreement with the whole domestic and social condition of 
the people. The texts are known now, and their meaning is 
no more problematical. When Sir William Jones first an- 
nounced the fact to Europe, it was considered an exaggeration, 
and attributed to his sanguine and benevolent nature. The 
latest discoveries have proved that the great and good founder 
of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta was not mistaken. 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION IN HINDOSTAN. 125 



Y. 

"We find the following passage and reflections in Heeren's 
Asiatic Nat. 11. p. 139 : " As tlie Yedas, like the Zend-Avesta,, 
are for the most part conversant abont ceremonial laws, they 
imply consequently the-existence of a certain form of religious 
worship, which, being subject to the observance of peculiar rites 
and invocations, would of course be confided to a sacerdotal 
caste. Now the worship in question concerns a religious sys- 
tem, which, according to the unanimous opinion of all those 
who have studied the subject, has for its foundation the belief 
in one God." And in a note he refers to Asiatic Researches, 
vol. viii., p. 396, adding the following phrase : " Sir W. Jones, 
Father Paulino, and the reports of the Danish missionaries, all 
agree on this point, which is further confirmed by numerous 
passages in the Upanishads." Since Heeren's time a far more 
extensive study of the Indian " sacred " books has raised his 
assertion to what we may call the height of demonstration ; and 
Colebrooke, Haug, Spiegel, as well as Max Miiller, have made 
it a truth which cannot be now contested, that the Yedas, as 
well as the Zend-Avesta, contain the doctrine of plain and pure 
monotheism. This last celebrated writer, particularly, has 
spoken eloquently and emphatically of it in his lectures " On 
the Science of Religion," to which later on we shall allude. 

To show the importance of this concession, we have only to 
bring it in juxtaposition with the remarks of the Gottingen 
Professor at the beginning of his first chapter on Indians: 
" The historians who have inquired into the religion and learn- 
ing of the East, have almost always been obliged to revert to 
India for information in their researches. That distant coun- 
try, however, has at no former period attracted the attention of 
Europeans in these particulars, so much as at the present day. . . 
The learned of Great Britain now flatter themselves that they 



126 



GENTILISM. 



have at length discovered the sources from which, not only the 
rest of Asia, hut the whole Western World, derived their 
knowledge and their religion." 

Our whole thesis, therefore, seems to he thus already granted, 
at least in a general way ; and we might almost conclude at 
present, that the religion of the ancient world was pure mono- 
theism, i 

For, this would seem, at first sight, to settle the question of the 
pure monotheism of the earliest civilized communities ; of the 
Hindoos, at all events ; and to emancipate us from the task of 
further elucidating the suhject. 

But so decided is the sceptical attitude adopted, alas ! by a 
large portion of the literary, and, at times, even of the learned 
world, that were we to stop here, we might be condemned to 
listen to a remonstrance iigainst our conclusion, drawn from a 
kind of ambiguity in the very word " monotheism," which many 
would now make synonymous with real pantheism, or rather 
with the absorption of all beings in one ; and this they pretend 
is the real doctrine of the Hindoo Vedas. We must, there- 
fore, enter into some discussion on those primitive books. And, 
although we cannot pretend to solve the difficulty with respect 
to the grammatical meaning, since we know nothing of the San- 
scrit, old or recent, yet we imagine that we can communicate to 
our readers a conviction which is firmly established in our own 
mind, from numerous passages whose strict meaning has now 
been settled by competent writers, that any such remonstrance 
has no foundation in fact ; and that the numerous other pas- 
sages of a different nature, in which the language involves 
really the doctiine of absorption in Brahma, can be shown in 
truth to strengthen our very position, by indicating the first of 
those downward steps, from pure doctrine to the reverse, 
which, as we said previously, is clearly demonstrable in the 
case of Hindostan. Moreover, we expect to be able to show 
that the transition from truth to error was natural and so grad- 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION IN HINDOSTAJST. 127 



ual as to afford additional confirmatory evidence of the posi- 
tion we are endeavoring to maintain. 

We cannot enter into a lengthy description of the cele- 
brated books known as the Yedas. The reader can consult the 
more recent authors on the subject. Enough is it for us to say 
that they are of a very high antiquity, possibly, and even prob- 
ably, older than the Pentateuch of Moses ; that the three first, 
known as the Rig, the Yajur, and the Saman -Yedas, are 
admitted to be " canonical," if we may use the expression ; and 
that the fourth — the Atharvan-Yeda — contains, certainly, mat- 
ter unacceptable to a strict exegetist, although a great part of 
it cannot give rise to any objection. Each of them may be 
divided into three parts,- which, however, often encroach upon 
one another— the mantras, the brahmanas, and the upanishads. 
The first consist of prayers and solemn rites ; the second con- 
tain precepts chiefly, but often accompanied with hymns and 
invocations ; the last, met with sometimes among the mantras 
and the brahmanas, are in greater number placed at the end 
of each Yeda, and consist of treatises, dialogues, and high con- 
siderations on the nature of God, on creation, on the world, 
on the soul of man, on the most elevated subjects of religious 
philosophy. It is chiefly in the upanishads that is to be found 
the purest doctrine of monotheism and natural religion. Some- 
times, also, the errors — not found, however, in the Eig-Yeda — 
of transmigration, etc., and chiefly of the final absorption of the 
soul, even of the whole universe, in God, lead evidently to 
open heresy, and to that broad pantheism which was advo- 
cated later by Hindoo philosophers, who carried it at length 
to atheism and annihilation, or, as it is called, the nirvana. 

But before proceeding to point out the various steps down- 
wards of the religious and philosophical systems of Hindostan-, 
and bow the grossest subsequent errors came from an exag- 
geration of truth, natural to a nature so poetical as was that of 

the Hindoos, — whence, it is evident, our thesis that the primitive 
10 



128 



GENTILISM. 



pure monotheistic doctrine was the starting-point from which 
were evolved the most erroneous systems of religion or philos- 
ophy will receive abundant support, we must pursue a brief 
inquiry into the authenticity and antiquity of the upanishads 
as a part of the Vedas. Indeed, the whole question would 
seem to hinge on this fact. So incontestible are the proofs in 
them, of a truly Christian monotheism, that those, too many, 
all-! modern writers, who will persist in asserting, against 
all the proofs, that the human race, started from sheer barba- 
rism, and from the lowest conceivable doctrinal points, have 
pretended, lately, that the upanishads are very much later in 
point of time than the other portions of the Vedas, and were, 
in fact, the result of long studies on the highest subjects of 
philosophy. AVe, on the contrary, maintain that the purer 
and the higher is the doctrine, the older it is on that very 
account ; that the noblest ideas are precisely those which man- 
kind received and held at first ; that all errors, all false beliefs 
and absurdities, were the strange progress made by the human 
mind reflecting on revealed truth as communicated to it at 
first ; finally, that, as the grossest immorality, the absurdities 
the most revolting, and an almost incredible perversity, con- 
stitute, confessedly, in our days, the pagan moral atmosphere 
of Hindostan ; whatever in the doctrine of the old books of the 
count 17 is acceptable to a Christian, as noble, grand, just, and 
true, must be placed nearest to the origin of the nation. 

First, there is no reason whatever to place, in point of time, 
the upanishads, at least those admitted as genuine and ancient, 
after the mantras and brahmanas. No Hindoo Brahmin would 
do so. They would all alike say, that both are Yedic, and be- 
long to the same epoch. They are certainly written in the same 
style, that noble archaic, rich, and abundant Sanscrit, so differ- 
ent from that of the great poems of Ramayana, and Mahabha- 
rata, chiefly from that of the Puranas, and above all from the 
grovelling and detestable Tantras, the most modern of all. 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION IN HLTSTDOSTAN. 



129 



Since there is perfect sameness of style in the whole of the 
three first Yedas, since the upanishads are often intermixed 
with the mantras and brahmanas, since the Hindoo nation 
has always accepted them as having the same authority and 
divine origin, what rational pretext can there be for endeav- 
oring to make a distinction where, in point of fact, there is 
none ; what motive can there be but to suit preconceived opin- 
ions, and to force an argument in behalf of what is precisely in 
question, namely : the supposed primitive low state of man ? 
What but a perverse resolve to obliterate, so far as it is in 
their power to do, the undeniable testimony supplied by con- 
temporary authoritative records to the nobleness of mind, eleva- 
tion of thought, true civilization, and high religious and philo- 
sophical thought, which we see surrounding with their benedic- 
tions the very cradle of mankind ? 

Max Miiller, in his " History of Sanscrit Literature," makes a 
marked distinction between the new and the old Upanishads. 
He says that "new Upanishads were always composed by new 
sects." .... The old and genuine ones did not pretend to give 
more than " guesses at truth " ; and " when in course of time 
they became invested with an inspired character, the text al- 
lowsd great latitude to those who professed to be believers in 
their revelation." Consequently, "not only the Vedanta phi- 
losophers, but likewise the Sankkya, the Nyaya, and the Yoga 
teachers all pretend to find in the Upanishads some warranty 
for their tenets, however antagonistic in their bearings." But 
this is said only of comparatively modern compositions. 

The truly old and genuine ones are to be spoken of very dif- 
ferently. Eammohun Roy, according to Max Miiller, asserted 
that, " The adoration of the Supreme Being is exclusively pre- 
scribed by the Upanishads, or the principal part of the Yedas, 
and also by the Yedanta." Every one knows the authority of 
the celebrated Rammohun Roy on the subject. Himself a 
Hindoo, no one, perhaps, in modern times has ever known so 



130 



G EN TIL ISM. 



well the language and the true doctrine of his country in the 
past. 

But who were the composers of those remarkable books, the 
Vedas ? ^Yere they, from the beginning, arranged as they are 
in the eleven very large volumes which now form the collec- 
tion ? A word first on this second question : " The Vedas," 
B i \ s lleeren, " must evidently have required the labors of some 
compiler who incorporated the detached pieces into one work. 
And in effect, Hindoo tradition has assigned the task to Vyasa, 
whose age goes far back into the fabulous periods. Vyasa, 
however, is nothing more than a common term applicable to 
any compiler in general; we are therefore still in the dark. . . . 
There is, nevertheless, the less reason to be surprised at this 
uncertainty ; the same is the case with the books of Moses. 
They have been preserved to our times, but the true account of 
their origin," — lleeren should have said of their "compila- 
tion " — " is involved in the deepest obscurity." 

But who were the original "composers" of these books? 
Each particular piece, prayer, hymn, precept, upanishad, bears 
in the compilation the name of its author; and it is especially 
recommended to the officiating Brahmin not to forget this name 
when using the text in any sacred rite. The whole is revealed 
in the opinion of the Hindoos, and comes from God. Thus 
every author of any particular piece is, according to that opin- 
ion, an inspired writer. No Christian, of course, can share in 
this belief. Vet it is well to mention it, in order to show that 
no discrimination can be made by any modern critic as against 
the upanishads in particular. But if the actual name of every 
one of those writers can very well be matter of doubt, there is, 
however, a general attribute 'given to many of them by all 
Brahmins, which it is as well to note. The hymns and prayers 
of the mantras, comprised in ten thousand verses or stanzas, 
are put into the mouths of holy men — Bishis — mentioned by 
name. And says Heeren : " The supposed composers are very 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION IN HINDOSTAN. 



131 



frequently Bishis themselves, and count, among their number, 
Brahmins, and sometimes even royal personages." This re- 
mark of the Gottingen Professor is worthy of attention. The 
mention of Brahmins is here superfluous, as in Hindostan, 
chiefly at the origin, all great and holy men belonged to that 
caste. But it is, in our opinion, extremely important to know 
that in general the authors of the various parts of the Yedas 
were holy men — Bishis — and likewise powerful men, " some- 
times even royal personages." We cannot have a better de- 
scription of a " patriarch " in olden time than a " Bishi " or holy 
man of high standing, rich and powerful, and of a kingly race. 
Thus were surely Abraham in Mesopotamia, Melchisedech in 
the land of Canaan, and Job in the land of Hus. The "inspi- 
ration " of these three great men was indubitable, and we can- 
not, we need scarcely remark, place the Hindoo Bishis on the 
same elevated plane. But how many other patriarchs in the 
times of Abraham and Job were holy and powerful men with- 
out being " inspired ?" And what should prevent us from 
placing the Hindoo Bishis in the same category ? We consider 
it, therefore, as extremely probable that the authors of the 
Yedas were true patriarchs of Central Asia, who left to their 
posterity the noble doctrine of which we propose to give a 
short sketch. And what confirms us in our opinion is, that 
invariably the laws of Menu, in texts which we have had no 
occasion to quote, recommend to the true Brahmin, together 
with high piety and entire devotion to God, together even with 
simplicity of manners and frugality of life, a great care of their * 
wealth, attachment to it, and a real solicitude in increasing it 
by all lawful means. Wealth, in the institutes of Menu, is a 
precious thing, almost a virtue ; its loss a great evil ; and yet 
a luxurious life is strictly forbidden, and simplicity of diet and 
apparel highly recommended. We would like to know where 
all this can be found combined more preeminently than in the 
patriarchs of the cast of Abraham, of Jacob, of Job ? 



Q E2TTILISM. 



After such testimony as this, he must be a bold man, and 
something more than bold, who would venture to dispute that 
the Yedas were composed before idolatry prevailed. The cele- 
brated Orientalist, Henry Thomas Colebrooke, was, we think, 
the first to make the observation that the Vedas exhibit no traces 
whatever of the sects of Siva and Vishnu ; " Nowhere," he says, 
" excepting only in the latter sections of the Atharvan-Veda — 
the fourth Veda — which must, therefore, be regarded as spu- 
rious, have I been able to discover the slightest vestige of the 
worship of Rama and of Krishna, considered as incarnations of 
Vishnu." In fact, the " Trimourti," which has so often been 
adduced as an evidence that the Hindoos had some knowledge 
of the Christian Trinity, but which was in truth one of the 
most prolific sources of the subsequent idolatry, makes its ap- 
pearance long after the epoch of the Vedas. There is no men- 
tion in them of any real God but the " Supreme Spirit, 
which moves at pleasure, but in itself is immovable ; distant 
from us, yet very near us ; pervading this whole system of 
worlds, yet infinitely beyond it." 

If Siva and Vishnu, as mythological personages, are not men- 
tioned in the Vedas, much less can the reader find in them that 
crowd of gods whose ridiculous history form what is called the 
mythology of Hindostan. And, as all the monuments of former 
times in the country, even those of the highest antkpiity in point 
of art, are literally covered with the various episodes related in 
the long epic poems sculptured in prominent relief on the re- 
maining walls of these edifices, it follows strictly that the Vedas 
are more ancient than the oldest of them. No anticmary has 
yet found in Hindostan buildings which can be referred to 
Vedic times. This remark has not been sufficiently insisted 
upon. And nothing, in our opinion, is more natural, and more 
in the order of things. There can be no relics of that primeval 
period, because the " patriarchs " never could attempt to build 
Buch piles as those of a subsequent epoch. They lived mostly 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION IN HIISTDOSTAN. 133 



under tents ; a rude stone altar was the place chosen for sacri- 
fice ; and the smoke of the holocaust rose upwards in the blue 
atmosphere, and never blackened the interior walls of any gigan- 
tic edifice. 

After these preliminary observations, we arrive now at the 
doctrine of those ancient days, as far as it can be ascertained. 

VI. 

The mantras of the Yeds make often mention of gods and 
deities, as they are called in our translations, and it is impor- 
tant to know what is really meant by such expressions as these. 
It seems that the word thus interpreted is devata in Sanscrit ; 
and its meaning, in comparatively modern language, may be, 
indeed, deity or god. But we protest against giving it this in- 
terpretation in the case of the first Vedas. It is beyond dis- 
pute, that in these old books, anything either consecrated or 
endowed with some native dignity, chiefly in the matter of re- 
ligious rites, is called devata. Thus a horse led to be sacrificed, 
a weapon on which the help of heaven is invoked, even a rem- 
edy against impure dreams, considered justly as a great evil in 
the Menu code, as well as many other sacred or consecrated 
objects, are called devatas ; and we by no means deny that 
some help, temporal or spiritual, was expected from them. 

We ought not, therefore, to be surprised that Indra, or the 
blue vault of heaven ; Agni, or the elementary fire, chiefly 
that of lightning ; Ou/iu, or the beautiful western sky, when 
the new crescent of the moon begins to appear, etc., etc., are 
all called devatas, and addressed with devotion by the highly 
imaginative Hindoo. The primitive inhabitants of that extra- 
ordinary country were of so poetical a nature, that their great- 
est geniuses could never write a history or a chronicle. Their 
vivid imagination could not rest satisfied with cold and stub- 



134 



GENTTLISM. 



born facts, no more than with a precise philosophical lan- 
guage. 

It is true the Yeclas speak of oblations and sacrifices to 
Indra, to Agni, etc. Were not these, therefore, in the opinion 
of the writers, beings of a divine nature ? We reply, not in 
the sense of our own more exact way of expressing ourselves, 
although they supposed in them some inexplicable consecration. 
But the " Institutes of Menu " appear to us to decide the cpies- 
tion (Chap. ii. S3) : " The triliteral monosyllable (om or aum) 
is an emblem of the Supreme ; the suppressions of breath with 
a mind fixed on God are the highest devotion, but nothing is 
more exalted than the (jayatriP (84) : " All rites ordained in 
the Ycdaj oblations to fire (or Agni), and solemn sacrifices, pass 
away ; but that which passes not away is declared to be the 
syllable om ; since it is a symbol of God, the Lord of created 
beings." (85): "The act of repeating his Holy Name is ten 
times better than the appointed sacrifice, etc." (80) : " The 
four domestic sacraments, accompanied with the appointed 
sacrifice, are not ecpial all together to a sixteenth part of the 
act performed by a repetition of the gayatri." 

And what is the gayatri, so superior to all invocations of the 
elements for help ? Here is the translation of it given by Sir 
William Jones : " Let us adore the supramacy of that divine 
Sun," — not the visible luminary, but — " the Godhead who 
illuminates all, who recreates all, from whom all proceed, to 
whom all must return, whom we invoke to direct our under- 
standings aright in our progress towards His holy seat." This 
was the most sacred verse of the Yedas, whose recitation, ac- 
cording to the code of Menu, was not only far above all high 
expressions of awe in presence of the elements, but was to pre- 
cede all the religious acts of Brahmins. How could they have 
been at any time worshippers of the forces of nature when 
anteriorly, and at the same time, they acknowledge such an 
infinitely Superior Being ? It is repeatedly declared in the 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION IN HINDOSTAN. 135 



Menu code that all ceremonies and rites are nothing compared 
to the adoration of the Supreme. 

As well might we say that the Catholic Church teaches the 
worship of the elements, because in her liturgy she consecrates 
them, and addresses them afterwards in language which in 
some way approaches to Vedic expressions. If some of the 
modern critics who comment on the Hindoo religious hooks, 
knew how the Catholic Church speaks of water, salt, fire, oil, 
and wine, they might he prepared to understand those other 
literary compositions, and they would not try, as they do, to 
assign to them an interpretation which they do not really hear. 
ISTot that we admit a perfect identity in them, nor see any diffi- 
culty in the strange forms Of the Rig- Veda. The mantras led 
certainly the people gradually to idolatry. But we know that 
a primitive religion must have viewed the material world in a 
very different manner from the learned man of the nineteenth 
century. And we think that what astonishes the " modern 
savant," namely, the confidence reposed in the help expected 
from mere material beings, is caused by his ignorance of the 
natural primitive feeling of man in presence of a wonderful 
world, of which he feels that he was made to be the master, 
and yet finds that he is often the slave. 

To explain our meaning more clearly, suppose a philosopher 
believing himself to be well acquainted with what he calls the 
laws of nature, yet, conscious of being profoundly ignorant of 
the Catholic religion, to enter by chance, on Holy Saturday, an 
edifice dedicated by the Mother Church, and to read carelessly 
from a book lent him by one of the worshippers. "What would 
be his surprise to find, in the office of the day, at the moment 
that the officiating priest touches with his hand the water of 
the font he is blessing, the following words : " Sit Time sancta 
et innocens creatura " — namely, the water contained in the font 
— " libera ab omni impugnatoris inoursu, et totius nequitim 
purgata discessu. Sitfom vivus, aqua regenerans, unda puri- 



13G 



GE2TTILISM. 



cans, ut omnes hoc lavacro salutifero diluendi, jperfectos, jpiir- 
gationis indulgeritiam consequcmtur. . . ." lie would conclude 
that the Catholic expects Lis moral purification from mere ma- 
terial water, which hesides is openly called a "holy and inno- 
cent being." Surely this philosopher would be as safe in his 
conclusion as the critic who, from the " oblation to fire " in the 
Vcdas, is perfectly certain that the primitive Hindoo "wor- 
shipped the elements." Many other passages of the Catholic 
liturgy, chiefly in the administration of baptism, in the blessing 
of the holy oils, etc., etc., might be adduced in illustration of 
what few, we suspect, will be found willing to deny, and 
brought forward to illustrate the subject under consideration. 

AW hope no one,- in our clays, would call the " holy water," 
the " blessed salt," etc., used in Catholic rites, the gods of the 
Catholic. It is as just to imagine that the " sacrificial post," the 
" cords." etc, used in Hindoo worship, were really the gods of 
the Vedic Hindoo ; yet they were devatds. 

AW can now somewhat understand the address in the Rig- 
Yeda to the horse led for sacrifice, which, as a modern critic 
says, is invoiced by the worshipper in the following strain : " Thy 
great birth, O horse, is to be glorified ; whether first springing 
from the firmament or from the water, inasmuch as thou hast 
neighed at thy birth ; thou hast the wings of the falcon, and 
the limbs of the deer. Trita harnessed the horse which was 
given by Yama, Indra first mounted him, and Gandharba seized 
the reins .... Thou, horse, art Yama, thou art Aditya, thou 
art Trita by a mysterious act ; thou art associated with Soma." 
Job in describing the horse, was not so mystical as the com- 
poser of this piece of the first Yeda ; but any one acquainted 
with Catholic liturgy has really the key for the intei-pretation 
of this passage ; because he knows that in high religious poetry, 
any natural element, any animal even, can be found associated 
with superior beings, and with a whole mystical world perfectly 
unknown to the physiei-t of modern times. 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION IN HINDOSTAN. 



137 



And the "critics" of whom we speak cannot strengthen 
their, position by the opinions of Hindoo " theologians," as they 
call them, who evidently lived many ages after the Yedas were 
composed, who were, moreover, rank idolaters, and could no 
more understand those old and venerable books than the mod- 
ern critics themselves. It has even become the fashion for 
Orientalists of our age to address themselves in India to •pun- 
dits, and to consider their interpretation of the Yedas as a safe 
one. A sincere Christian will probably better understand them 
than an idolatrous pundit, because natural religion is a fun- 
damental part of the Christian religion, not of modern Hin- 
dooism. 

We must conclude briefly this part of our investigations, by 
stating that all the labor of modern writers, to explain in the 
Rig- Veda the evolution of Hindooism from the worship of 
elementary powers, by trying first to reconcile it with the idea 
of one Supreme Being, as expressed in the Tyrahmana part, 
and then by emancipating altogether monotheism from the 
primitive elementary religion in the upanishads, is perfectly 
thrown away. There has never been such an evolution. The 
three parts of every Yeda stand together. And nothing is more 
absolutely certain, nothing more completely out of the reach of 
cavil, than that antecedently to all other Hindoo beliefs what- 
soever, existed the belief in the Supkeme ; since all the ceremo- 
nies of elementary religion even, as it is called by modern 
critics, must begin by the solemn profession of the gayatri. 

We are now prepared to listen to some of those grand voices 
of antiquity proclaiming the eternal existence of the Infinite. 
It is called Brahma ! But Brahma (neuter), not the (male) 
Brahma of the Trimourti— that abomination introduced by the 
poets of the Epic period. 

It has been remarked by several recent writers that, in the 
Hindoo worship, Brahma has scarcely a place ; and that Siva, 
Vishnu, Ganesa, etc, absorb all the interest of the worshipper. 



138 



GENTILISM. 



"We reply, yes, in the modern Hindoo religion. When the 
fables of Siva, and later thos3 of Vishnu, were invented by the 
fertile imagination of the poets, they could not forg.t at once 
the great name of Brahma, which occupied a supreme place in 
the primitive religion of the country. They retained it, there- 
fore ; but they made it a man. Thus the male Brahma was 
invenli*! ; and henceforward the Hindoos had the elements of 
their Triinoiirti. But instead of having any correspondence 
with the Holy Trinity of the Christian, it was the introduction 
of pure idolatry, which has prevailed since that time ; and it 
Was only to be expected that the new monstrous god, the male 
Brahma, should take an inferior position to that of his two 
new brothers; an inferior position, we mean, as far as regards 
the interest taken in him by the idolatrous Hindoos. The 
male Brahma, the product of the later Vedic times, could not 
compete in mythology with Siva and Vishnu, whose avatars, 
or incarnations, were the great and absorbing subject of the 
then new Epic poems. He therefore — the male Brahma — re- 
mained in the back-ground, to use a vulgar expression ; and the 
adoration of the more modern idolater was turned chiefly to 
Siva and Vishnu, the new and brilliant divinities invented by 
poets, whose fertile legends could fill the imagination of artists 
who then began to represent their history on the walls of 
majestic edifices. 

But, in old and primitive times, Brahma (neuter), namely, 
the Supreme, the Eternal and Infinite Spirit, was the chief and 
all-absorbing object of the adoration of the well-instructed 
Brahmin. Bead some few of the great conceptions transmit- 
ted, no doubt, from the origin of man, through the first Patri- 
archs or Bishis, who wrote the great TJpanishads of the yet un- 
corrupted Vedas. 

" What the sun and light are to this visible world, that is 
the Supreme Good and Truth to the intellectual and invisible 
universe ; and as our corporeal eyes have a distinct perception 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION IN" HIKDOSTAK". 139 



of objects enlightened by the sun, thus our souls acquire sure 
knowledge, by meditating on the light of truth which emanates 
from the Being of beings ; that is the light by which alone our 
minds can be directed in the path to beatitude." 

" Without hand or foot He runs rapidly, and grasps firmly ; 
without eyes He sees ; without ears He hears all ; He knows 
whatever can be known, but there is none who knows Him ; 
Him, the wise call the great, Supreme, pervading Spirit." 
(Sir William Jones, extracts from the Yedas). 

Of this last text, says the same authority, Radhacant has 
given a paraphrase : " Perfect truth ; perfect happiness ; with- 
out equal ; immortal ; absolute unity ; whom neither speech 
can describe, nor mind comprehend ; all-pervading ; all-tran- 
scending ; delighted with His own boundless intelligence ; not 
limited by space or time ; without feet, moving swiftly ; with- 
out hands, grasping all worlds ; without eyes, all-surveying ; 
without ears, all-hearing ; without an exterior guide, under- 
standing all ; without cause, the first of all causes ; all-ruling ; 
all-powerful ; the creator, preserver, transformer of all things ; 
such is the Great One ; this the Yedas declare." Can a Chris- 
tian philosopher, we ask, speak more correctly ? Were not the 
Hindoos at first monotheists ? 

Sir William Jones gives yet the following, as extracted from 
an Hpanishad of the Yajur-Veda : " Unveil, O Thou who 
givest sustenance to the world, that face of the true Sun, 
now hidden by a vase of golden light ! so that we may see the 
truth, and know our whole duty !" " That all-pervading Spirit, 
which gives light to the visible sun, even the same in Mnd am 
I, though infinitely distant in degree? St. Paul said later : 
Ipsius genus sumus. " Let my soul return to the immortal 
Spirit of God, and then let my body, which ends in ashes, re- 
turn to dust !" " O Spirit, who pervadest fire, lead us in a 
straight path to the riches of beatitude ! Thou, O God, pos- 
sessest all the treasures of knowledge ; remove each foul taint 



140 



GENTILISM. 



from our souls ; we continually approach Thee with the highest 
praise and the most fervid adoration." 

Of such sort were the first strains of Hindoo intellectual 
melody which readied the ears of Europeans. Yet, at that 
time, only a few pages of the Vedas had been perused and 
translated. How much more is known from the labors of later 
Orientalists, of Oolebrooke, Max Midler, Wilson, Burhouf, 
Hang, and so many others ! 

Elear from the Rig-Veda that this world had a beginning', and 
what existed before : " Then (before creation), there was no 
entity or non-entity; no world, or sky, or aught above it; 
nothing anywhere involving or involved in the happiness of 
any one (create:!) ; nor water deep and dangerous. Death was 
not, nor was there immortality (for created beings), nor distinc- 
tion of day or night. But That breathed without (sensible) 
afflation, single with Her who is within Iliin (Eternal Wisdom 
probably). Other than Him nothing existed which since has 
been .... 'Who knows exactly, and who shall in this world 
declare whence and why this creation took place ? The gods 
(devatas) are subsequent to the production of this world ; then 
who can know whence it proceeded, or whence this varied 
world arose, or whether it upholds itself or not ? He who in 
the highest heaven is the ruler of this universe, does indeed 
know ; but not another one can possess this knowdedge ? " 
In this passage we have inserted a gloss of ours between 
brackets. 

Max Miiller thinks that Brahma was not the only name given 
to the Supreme by the first Hindoos. He even goes so far as 
to say that many names were applied to Him ; and he supposes 
that the subsequent gods of the Indian mythology were all Su- 
preme in the Hindoo mind ; and thus, in his opinion, polythe- 
ism was introduced. We cannot discuss this theoiy of the 
celebrated writer — for it seems to be with him a theory ; yet 
there is a name often used by the writers of " hymns " in the 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION IN HINDOSTAN. 141 



Vedae, which evidently in their mind was that of the true 
Almighty God. It is Varuna, the Greek Ovpavbg, "an ancient 
name of the sky," Mr. Muller says, " and of the God who 
resides in the sky." He took the trouble to translate the 
whole hymn, and introduces it in his " Fourth Lecture on the 
Science of Religion," by the following solemn words perfectly 
appropriate to our purpose : " It was — the hymn— more than 
three thoxisand years ago, uttered for the first time in a village on 
the banks of the Sutledge, then called the Satadru, by a man who 
felt as we feel, who spoke as we speak, who believed in many 
points as we believe." He had previously given his name, Va- 
sishtha — " a dark-complexioned Hindoo, shepherd, poet, priest, 
patriarch .... and does it not show the indestructibility of the 
spirit, if we see how the waves which, by a poetic impulse, he 
started on the vast ocean of thought, have been heaving, and 
spreading, and widening, till after centuries and centuries they 
strike against our shores, and tell us in accents that cannot be 
mistaken, what passed through the mind of that ancient Aryan 
poet, when he felt the presence of an Ahnighty God, the maker 
of heaven and earth, and felt at the same time the burden of 
his sin, and prayed to his God that He might take that burden 
from him, that He might forgive him his sin." 

" "Wise and mighty are the works of Him who stemmed 
asunder the wide firmaments (heaven and earth). He lifted 
on high the bright and glorious heaven ; He stretched out 
apart the starry sky and the earth. 

" Do I say this to my own self ? How can I get near into 
Varuna ? Will He accept my offering without displeasure ? 
When shall I with a quiet mind see Him propitiated ? 

" I ask, O Varuna, wishing to know this my sin ; I go to 
inquire of the wise ; the sages all tell me the same : ' Varuna 
it is who is angry with thee.' 

" Was it for an old sin, Varuna, that Thou wishest to de- 
stroy thy friend who always praises Thee ? Tell me, Thou 



142 



GEXTILISM. 



unconquerable Lord ! and I will quickly fura to Thee with 
praise, freed from sin. 

" Absolve us from the sins of our fathers, and from those 
which we committed with our own bodies. Release Yasishtha, 
O King, like a thief who has feasted on stolen cattle ; release 
him like a calf from the rope. 

" It was not our doing, O Yaruna, it was a slip ; an intoxi- 
cating draught, passion, dice, thoughtlessness. The old is there 
to mislead the young ; even sleep is not free from mischief. 

" Let me without sin give satisfaction to the angry God, like 
a slave to his bounteous lord. The Lord God enlighten the 
foolish ; lie, the wisest, leads His worshipper to wealth. 

" O Lord Yaruna, may this song go well to Thy heart ! 
May we prosper in keeping and acquiring ! Protect us, 
gods, always with your blessings." 

" This poem alone," says Max Muller, " shows that man 
was never forsaken of God ; and this conviction is worth more 
to the student of history than all the dynasties of Babylon and 
Egypt, worth more than all lacustrine villages, worth more 
than the skulls and jawd)ones of Neanderthal or Abbeville." 

Yet the same writer gives us a far superior hymn, in our 
opinion, in his " History of Sanscrit Literature " (London edit., 
1860, p. 540), and as it is short, we copy it : 

" Let me not yet, O Yaruna, enter into the house of clay. 
Have mercy, Almighty, have mercy. 

" If I go along trembling like a cloud driven by the wind, 
have mercy, Almighty, have mercy. 

" Through want of strength, Thou strong and bright God, 
have I gone to the wrong shore. Have mercy, Almighty, etc. 

" Thirst came upon the worshipper, though he stood in the 
midst of the waters. Have mercy, Almighty, etc. 

" "Whenever we men, O Yaruna, commit an offence before 
the heavenly host, whenever we break Thy law through thought- 
lessness ; have mercy, Almighty, have mercy." 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION 1ST HLTSTDOSTAN. 



143 



Mr. Miiller remarks with justice on the subject of this short 
poem, that " the language of these simple prayers of the Yedas 
is more intelligible to us than anything we find in the litera- 
ture of Greece and Rome, and there are here and there ardent 
expressions of faith and devotion in which even a Christian can 
join without irreverence." 

This is perfectly true, and we could not certainly " join with- 
out irreverence " in any of the prayers of the pagan Romans 
and Greeks when addressing Bacchus or Venus. Thus the 
men of those primitive times, when the Hindoo " sacred " . 
books were written, may be said to have been much nearer 
our own clays than the much more recent inhabitants of Italy 
or Hellas ; and we naturally find the language and the feelings 
of those old patriarchs untainted, as yet, with idolatry, a great 
deal more genial and acceptable to us. 

But besides Brahma and Yaruna (Ovpavbq), the Supreme 
God received often in Hindostan the name of " sky " and 
" light," and we will here conclude our observations on this 
part of our subject. It is Max Miiller again who remarks, that 
the name of the Supreme God was originally Dyaus in San- 
scrit, Zeus in Greek, Jovis or rather Diespiter in Latin, and 
Tiu in German. " These words are not mere words," he says, 
" but they bring before us with all the vividness of an event 
which we witnessed ourselves but yesterday, the ancestors of 
the whole Aryan race, thousands of years may be before Homer 
and the Vedas, worshipping an unseen Being, under the self- 
same name, the best, the most exalted name they could find in 
their vocabulary — under the name of Light and Sky. And let 
us not turn away and say that this was after all but nature-wor- 
ship and idolatry. No, it was not meant for that, though it 
may have been degraded into that in later times" We under- 
line these expressions as very remarkable in the* gifted author, 
because he often seems to think that the Aryan, as well as all 

other races, began by nature-worship, and raised themselves 
11 



1U 



GENTILISM. 



afterwards to the higher belief of true monotheism — a com- 
pletely false ide i, of which even Max Miiller, it seems, could not 
dispossess himself. "Xtya he continues, " did not mean the 
blue sky, nor was it simply the sky personified. It was meant 
for something else. We have in the Vedas the invocation : 
Dyaus pitar, in Greek AT -rdrep, in Latin Dies piter or Jupiter, 
and that means, in all the three languages, what it meant before 
these three languages were torn asunder. It means Heaven- 
Father ! These two words are not mere words. They are, to 
my mind, the oldest poem, the oldest prayer of mankind, or, 
at least, of that pure branch of it to which we belong." 

AVe may add that this invocation, going back to the very 
origin of our race, i.- evidently a part of that primeval revelation 
of which we have already spoken, and which our Divine Lord 
only revealed with more consummate clearness, when He taught 
us to say ; Our Father, who art in Heaven. 

But there is in the name, Light, given to God, a great deal 
more than Max Miiller appears to imagine. In another fine 
passage of the s:ime lecture, he explained how the first Aryans 
themselves were led to give it to the Supreme Being ; and he 
imagines that they merely looked all around themselves to find 
in their language the expression most appropriate to the Being 
whom they worshipped in their own mind, and a3 they could 
see in the whole creation nothing to compare with the bright 
and immense sky over their heads, they chose it as that which 
came nearer to their original idea, although it could not express 
it entirely, and was, in fact, afailv/re, as, we think, he calls it. 
This is connected with his theory, that the religion of any peo- 
ple ought to be sought in their language ; that in truth religion 
came from language. A thought striking at first sight, and 
■which we are far -from placing on a par with the degrading 
doctrine of the supporters of primitive barbarism ; yet which 
we cannot admit, and must reject m toto / because religion is 
in se anterior to language, although both belonged to man 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION IN HINDOSTAN. 145 



from his very origin. Religion is a sentiment which could not 
be generated by language. This latter was merely the expres- 
sion of the former. 

Man, indeed, had many reasons for applying the name, Light, 
to God. According to St. Paul, the Author of ail things has 
manifested Himself in His creation, and all His great attributes 
can be read there. Was it not, consequently, because light is 
the most perfect emblem of the Godhead that it \f as first cre- 
ated ? Fiat lux is the great word which ushers in all the other 
creative acts of God. And we know how sublime Longinus, 
though a pagan, thought that short phrase to be. Light alone 
would have sufficed for expressing nearly all, if not all, the 
attributes of the Divine Being — His immensity, power, good- 
ness, immateriality, indestructibility, etc. And was it not for 
this, when in the fullness of time, God wished to manifest 
Himself to us by assuming our nature, and the most beloved 
disciple was impelled by the Holy Spirit to declare the incar- 
nation of the Son of God, and the real and substantial divinity 
of Jesus Christ, that in the first lines of his gospel, he called 
Him — what? the infinite? the absolute? etc. No ; but the 
true Light — erat lux vera ? 

It is clear, therefore, that the primitive Aryans had many 
for choosing the word Dyaus — light or sky — as the 
nni DC of the Almighty. We have every motive for supposing 
they did not find the name after a long search, as Max 
Miller supposes. It rushed into the minds of the first men in 
their communication with God — for revelation for us is iden- 
I with communication. We do not know indeed whether 
Divine Author of our race in His sweet intercourse with 
the first man, and with many patriarchs of those early ages, 
revealed the name itself, as He did that of Jehovah to Moses — 
/ am He wlto is. If He did not by word of mouth, He did 
by an interior revelation, which we intended to convey in the 
expression, " the name, Light, rushed to the mind of the first 



1IG 



GENTILISM. 



men in their communication with God." And since that time 
it has heen the most appropriate, and the most universal, even 
in pagan antiquity ; and, we repeat, when a new, purer, clearer 
revelation was given through Jesus Christ, the same name was 
given again to the Incarnate God — erat lux vera. 

These high considerations, which the study of the Yedas 
have naturally suggested, show how pure, elevated, really sub- 
lime was the. primitive doctrine, since it originates such con- 
templations as these, which are, in fact, in the style of many 
Yedic upanishads. 

"We now hasten to the investigation of those less fortunate 
times, when pantheism began to invade the domain of truth. 

VII. 

No Christian can pretend that the oldest upanishads are alto- 
gether free from error; no uninspired writing can be — and 
some of the finest among them contain already the seeds of the 
subsequent pantheism, gliding gradually into naturalism, to 
come finally to the epic idolatry which followed. But in those 
really astonishing productions of religious philosophy, even 
when already somewhat tainted, how clear appears the bright- 
ness of primitive revelation ! We will quote as an example a 
passage of the Kathaka Upanishad : a doubt is submitted to 
Yama, the sovereign of the dead, in these words : " Some say 
that the soul exists after the death of a man (in connection 
with another body than this) ; others say that it does not. This 
I should like to know, instructed by thee." Yama explains to 
him that the soul and Brahma are one — (not in nature, at 
least in the primitive doctrine) — that a man attains immortality 
only by understanding this union, and that, to arrive at this 
understanding, he must free his mind from sensual desires, and 
get a correct knowledge both of Brahma and of the soul. 



ABORIGINAL EELIGION IN IIINDOSTAN. 



147 



" Know the' soul as the rider and the body as the car ; know 
intellect as the charioteer, and manas (the will) as the rein. 
The senses, they say, are the horses ; the objects, their roads ; 
and the enjoyer (or the rider), is the soul endowed with body, 
senses, and manas (or will). Thus say the wise : " If the char- 
ioteer is unwise, and his manas is always unbridled, his senses 
are uncontrolled like vicious horses ; but if he is wise, and his 
manas is always bridled, then his senses are controlled like 
good horses. He who, always impure, is unwise, and whose 
manas is unbridled, does not attain that abode (of immortality), 
but comes to the world (of birth and death, of expiation by 
transmigration). He, however, who, always pure, is wise, and 
whose manas is bridled, he attains that abode whence he is not 
born again. The man who has a wise charioteer, and whose 
manas is bridled, reaches the other shore of the road. Higher 
indeed than the objects are the senses; higher than the senses 
is manas ; higher than manas, intellect ; and higher than intel- 
lect, the great one (the soul). Higher than the great one is 
that which is unmanifested, and higher than the unmanifested, 
is the Supreme Spirit. But higher than the Supreme Spirit 
there is nothing ; He is the goal, the highest resort. This 
highest spirit is the soul hidden in created beings ; it is not 
manifest, but is beheld by those who can see what is subtle with 
an attentive, subtle intellect." 

Here, with an admirable analysis of the soul's faculties, and 
of the relations of the soul and body, truly worthy of the most 
pure primitive doctrine, we see the beginning of two great 
aberrations, which became the unfortunate cause of the devia- 
of subsequent philosophy, and the ruin of the primeval 
feme religion. These two aberrations were : the transmigra- 
tions of the soul, and its absorption in Brahma. This was the 
passage from monotheism to pantheism, from which was to 
issue the subsequent idolatry. 

It is very remarkable that the transmigration of the soul is 



148 



GENTILI3M. 



never mentioned in the Rig- Veda — the oldest. At first it was 
thought by modern critics to be contained in some expressions 
of the thirty-second verse of one of the hymns, according to the 
translation of Professor Wilson. But a more serious examina- 
tion proved that the passage, although susceptible of such a 
meaning, could more naturally bear a very different interpreta- 
tion ; so that it is now admitted that the Rig-Veda is pure of 
that error ; a new proof that the oldest doctrine is the purest. 
The al (sorption of the soul in Brahma grew gradually also from 
the primitive tenet, orthodox certainly; that the soul was the 
same /// lint] with Brahma, but infinitely distant in degree. 
The union of the soul with God after death (a truth Christian 
as well as Vedic), became gradually a real absorption, and thus 
Led to pantheism. 

Nothing is more easy to conceive than such a degeneracy in 
do trine, in the supposition of a primitive revelation left with 
only human tradition for a channel of communication through 
long ages. The versatility of the human mind is such, that a 
strong and exterior restraint is recpiired to keep it in due sub- 
mission to truth. Christ gave that power to the Church which 
He established. Nothing of the kind existed before His com- 
ing ; not even in the Synagogue, which left the subversive 
tenets of the Sadducees uncontradicted. The great truths, 
therefore, entrusted to man at the beginning could not possibly 
remain entirely pure ; and the natural progress which might 
have been expected was the retrogression from unmixed truth, 
first to a slight deviation from it, then to a strange misconcep- 
tion of it, leading finally to positive, unmitigated error. 

The Book of Wisdom has told us that men began to err by 
worshipping the works of God instead of God himself. We 
see in Hindostan the first symptoms of the great evil. Ab- 
sorption in God naturally leads to deify the w^hole universe, 
and thus to make the works of God equal to Himself, in order 
finally to worship them. Too soon was this the case in India. 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION IN HINDOSTAN. 149 



The Yedas were not written all at once, and of course they are 
not inspired as the Hindoos think. The first even, the most 
pure, is the work of many Rishis and great personages. Soon, 
in the finest upanishads, which contained yet admirable traits 
of the primeval grandeur, a reckless imagination introduced 
new forms of thought, chiefly by exaggerating what had been 
first transmitted from heaven. Expiation was the great moral 
law revealed even in Paradise, when man had to leave it. It 
took in Hindostan the form of the wanderings of souls from 
bodies to bodies, until first the idea of existence became a bur- 
den, and the wish arose to be absorbed in God, until at last 
philosophy should come to turn it into positive annihilation — 
nirvana. 

The progress of error was so rapid, that when the book of 
Menn was written, certainly before the end of the Yedic period 
— since the Atharvan-Yeda had not yet begun to appear — 
already the imagined creation of the "universe was a jumble of 
ridiculous legends, mixed up with some sublime conceptions 
left still entire in the . universal wreck. (See the 1st chap, of 
Menu " On Creation.") Yet this book was composed in a pure 
moral age, and contains an immense number of splendid imagin- 
ings. But, already, the error of transmigration had attained its 
utmost limits. Incredible details were given as inspired ; so that 
to each sin committed in this world, the -exact being, animal, 
plant, or mineral even, was allotted into which the guilty soul 
had to transmigrate. Already, likewise, the torments accom- 
panying these changes were described with a minuteness and 
horrible accuracy worthy of the long-subsequent Inferno of 
Dante. It was hell indeed without its eternity. And such 
doctrines prepared already the Hindoo mind for the desire of ab- 
sorption in God, merging at last in pantheism and the "nirva- 
na." The twelfth chapter of Menu deserves indeed to be read by 
ry one who wishes to understand the rapid progress of error 
in Hindostan. The conclusion arrived at will be abundantly 



150 



GENTILISM. 



confirmed by the reflection that a few centuries before, when 
the Rig- Veda was written, not an iota of that doctrine had yet 
been even imagined. It is to us perfectly clear that the error 
of transmigration preceded that of openly-declared absorption 
in God, for which it prepared the way. And the Institutes of 
Menu prove it; since, with all the minute details of the first 
doctrine they contain, the other one of absorption is nowhere 
in the book fully advocated. Not a word of it is said in the 
first chapter, which treats of creation, cosmogony, and the sup- 
posed divine plan in the existence of various beings; no full 
expression is given to it whenever the book speaks of supreme 
beatitude ; and even in this twelfth chapter, after the elaborate 
explanation of the wanderings of souls, when speaking of the 
destiny of the pure, the wise, and the holy, the highest felicity 
it promises them is : union with the male Brahma (already 
known it seems), union with the mighty and the unperceived ; 
but not with Brahma (neuter), the Supreme One, Infinite, Eter- 
nal Spirit There is even, a little later, after all the trivial 
rubbish previously detailed, a bright spot reflecting yet some- 
thing of primitive effulgence which deserves to be quoted 
(Chap, xii., 84) : " The sages inquired : ' After all those good 
acts performed in this world (to insure final happiness), is no 
single act held more powerful than the rest in leading men to 
beatitude ?' " (85) : ft Of all these duties," answered Bhrigu, 
" the principal is to acquire from the upanishads a true knowl- 
edge of One Supreme God ; that is the most exalted of all sci- 
ences, because it ensures immortality." (86) : " In this life, in- 
deed, as well as the next, the study of the Yedas, to acquire a 
knowledge of God, is held the most efficacious of those six 
duties in procuring felicity to man." (87) : " For in the knowl- 
edge and adoration of one God, which the Vedas teach, all the 
rules of good conduct are fully comprised." (88) : " The cere- 
monial duties prescribed by the Yedas (namely f. oblations to 
fire, sacrifices, etc.,) are of two kinds : on3 connected with this 



ABOEIGINAL EELIGION IN HINDOSTAN. 151 



world, and causing prosperity on earth ; the other abstracted 
from it, and procuring bliss in heaven." (89) : " A religious 
act proceeding from selfish views in this world (as a sacrifice to 
obtain rain), or in the next (as a pious oblation in the hope of 
a future reward), is declared to be concrete and interested ; but 
an act performed with a true knowledge of God, and with- 
out self-love, is called abstract and disinterested." (90) : " He 
who frequently perforins interested rites, attains an equal sta- 
tion with the rulers of the lower heaven ; but he who frequently 
performs disinterested acts of religion, becomes for ever ex- 
empt from a body composed of the five elements " — that is to 
say, is not any more subject to transmigration. (91) : " Equally 
perceiving the Supreme soul in all beings, and all beings in the 
Supreme soul, he sacrifices his own spirit by fixing it on the 
Spirit of God, and apjn'oaches the nature of that Sole Divinity 
who shines by His own effulgence." This last paragraph does 
not, of necessity, lead to pantheism. A quite similar doctrine 
has often been developed by Catholic mystic writers of the 
school of " pure love ;" and one is really astonished to find it 
so clearly expressed in the law of Menu. But the road is 
already plain which error was to take, in order to invade the 
religious life of such enlightened men as the primitive Hindoos 
were. A similar, concurrent, testimony to the truth we are 
endeavoring to establish is supplied by what is said of " cere- 
monial rites." It furnishes a new proof, that those primitive 
religious functions contained really nothing of the worship of 
elements, and the theory which modem critics have endeavored 
to establish, the natural passage, namely, from " elementary 
religion" to " monotheism" is not substantiated ; because a truly 
grand monotheistic belief always accompanied those " ceremo- 
nial rites " even, of the Big-Yeda. 

But when the doctrine of a " universal soul " was openly 
proclaimed; when it was asserted that our own is a "spark" 
from the " blazing fire," that God is " all beings," and " all 



152 



GENTILISM. 



In iii u.- are God," then indeed, Agni, Indra, Culiu, and all the 
other " devatas " became parcels of the Universal Gpd. Then, 
indeed, they imagined, as the Book of Wisdom says, " either 
the fire " — Agni, or " the winds " — Mis ruts, or " the swift air, 
or the circle of the stars, or the great water, or the sun and 
moon, to be the gods that rule the world." 

This became fur Hindustan the period of pantheism, usher- 
ing in the philosophy prevalent for many ages, until it culmi- 
nated in Buddhism. 

And here we must interrupt our direct course of thought to 
make one or two observations on that very mixture of truth 
and falsehood in many pieces of the Yedas, confirmatory of our 
opinion on the primitive purity of belief in Ilindostan. When 
admirable doctrines are clearly expressed, bright as day and 
pure as light, and when, in the same chapter or paragraph, the 
seeds of error appear which subsequently ruled supreme in the 
same country, which of the two was the predecessor of the 
other ? If the errors were, and the " worship of elements" was 
the primitive religion of the country, then monotheism, which 
on that hypothesis followed them, was a true and very remark- 
able "progress," which would have naturally struck deep into 
the Ilindoo mind, and have formed, for a long time, the firm 
belief of the race. The exaggerations and false consecpienees 
which might have followed woidd certainly have taken a direc- 
tion very different from the one out of which monotheism had 
sprung ; and to suppose that a pure and exalted belief emerg- 
ing from a kind of fetichism, would have almost immediately 
returned to it, or even to a large and universal pantheism, 
much more akin to the " worship of elements," is to ignore 
human nature and to contradict the very doctrine of " pro- 
gress," advocated so warmly by the very supporters of the 
opinion we endeavor to disprove. 

It took long ages to obscure entirely the primitive patriarchal 
religion, and the progress of error was so gradual, although at 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION IN HINDOSTAN. 



153 



times rapid, that it is impossible to assign a positive epoch to 
the introduction of idolatry. It would be unreasonabe to 
imagine that the adoration of a " Supreme Ruler," so clearly ex- 
pressed in primitive Hindooism, and which is supposed by 
many writers to have been the natural result of philosophical 
investigation, could have been so soon replaced by pantheism 
and the rank idolatry which followed. The same writers,' it is 
true, tiy their best to ignore that primitive purity of belief 
which we advocate. But they cannot destroy the texts we 
have quoted and many others which could be adduced ; and 
Heeren expressed only a -simple fact when he said, that " the 
religious system of the Hindoos, according to the unanimous 
opinion of all those who have studied the subject, has for its 
foundation the belief in one God." At the same time, the 
whole formula of " progressive " error in Hindooism forms a 
" series " which cannot be broken. It begins in the Rig- Veda, 
by pin e monotheism unmixed as yet with pantheism and trans- 
migration. It exhibits in the laws of Menu a multitude of 
erroneous deviations which strike the reader at first sight. It 
teaches open pantheism in the subsequent philosophy which 
was deduced from those errors, chiefly in Buddhism, an off- 
shoot of the Hindooism of that period, as we shall prove. 
Pure idolatry, or the worship of the works of man, according 
to the 1 >( Hjk of Wisdom, is finally the religion advocated in the 
great poems of Ramayana and Mahabahrata, which followed ; 
an idolatry which culminated in the puranas and the tantras, 
of which we have yet to speak. No link is wanted in that 
chain of errors which we have called a strict " series ;" and we 
do not see how a more perfect demonstration of our opinion 
could be furnished, than the well-known succession of beliefs 
in Himlostan. 

Our next step, therefore, is to examine briefly the philosophy 
which was the real introducer of pure pantheism in that country, 
and whose remarkable exponent, Buddhism, remains to this day. 



154 



GENTILISM. 



VIII. 

The philosophical labors of Hindoo-Brahmins began during 
the Yedic period, since the Institutes of Menu contain already 
speculations which entered largely into the succeeding systems. 
The Mimansa is yet almost completely Vedic, and contains lit- 
tle of the subsequent errors. The Yedanta is considered in the 
same light -by Max Midler ; but its branches, called Nydya 
and SdnTcJvya, preach openly the doctrine of a Great Pan, sole 
reality ; the exterior world having no true existence. In this 
system the human soul is a part of the universal one, and is 
destined to be finally merged and absorbed in it. We remem- 
ber the utterances of the first Vedas, declaring God " one in 
Tcind with our soul, but infinitely superior in Degree.'''' How 
different are the two doctrines ! Yet we see clearly in the first 
the genesis of the last. 

The philosophy of Ilindostan is remarkable chiefly in two 
ways : First, in the immense variety of objects it embraces, so 
that most of the speculations of Greek, Latin, and modem phi- 
losophy are already discussed in that rich Sanscrit of old times; 
and the systems of logic, metaphysics, and theodicea, so differ- 
ent in method from the Aristotelic and scholastic systems, 
often, nevertheless, open up views as remarkable as unexpected, 
and show the extraordinary acuteness and activity of the Hin- 
doo mind. Second, in those strange, abnormal — with respect to 
us — and always original, specidations, we see from the start a 
union of abstract philosophy with physiology and physical sci- 
ence in general, truly astonishing, Avhen we reflect that our 
Western mind was so slow in trying to make the world of 
spirits and the world of exterior objects help each other for 
the instruction of man. Leibnitz, we think, was the first to 
tiy it, at least in the modern sense. Catholic philosophy has 
always done it in its own way. 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION IN HINDOSTAN. 



155 



We must not be tempted to any digression on this inter- 
esting subject. The scope of our work limits us for the pres- 
ent to the religious aspect of the question. The philosophical 
doctrines, we repeat, which followed the Yedas, and preceded 
the great Epic poems, teach an undisguised pantheism, and pre- 
pare the way for the Buddhistic nirvana, or annihilation of the 
soul as the only deliverance from transmigration. 

Already all the systems declare, in their opening page, that 
true philosophy is the final emancipation of the soul from the 
material evils of this world ; Brahma (neuter), the previous 
true God of the monotheistic Hindoo, has become the Univer- 
sal SouL It is yet one, self-existent, supreme ; but the uni- 
verse has emanated from It, and remains a part of its sub- 
stance ; its visibility being merely a deception — maya. The 
soul of man is itself a part of the great Soul ; it is a spark 
issued from a blazing fire ; and it will remain, apparently, dis- 
tinct from Brahma, only as long as its ignorance of truth shall 
continue ; that ignorance consists merely in regarding the world 
as a reality capable of subsisting out of Brahma. The object 
of philosophy is, therefore, to teach that we are one with God, 
or rather that the whole universe is one with Him. The conse- 
quence is, that the whole universe must be adored, if there is 
such a thing as a worship of God. Thus, as the Book of Wis- 
dom openly declared, man was led to prostrate himself before 
the works of God, ignoring the true Creator. The Hindoo 
worship remained meanwhile, apparently, that of the Yedas, 
which all those systems professed to acknowledge as revealed. 
But, indeed, the " devatas " acquired then a veiy different 
oonsecration from the one they possessed previously. It was 
precisely what would happen if an uninstructed Catholic, alto- 
gether ignorant even of the first mystery of his religion — the 
most adorable Trinity — prostrated himself, as before a god, at 
the sight of " holy water " with which his ancestors had been 
directed to bless themselves in that Supreme Name. Hence 



» 



156 



GENTILISM. 



the Yoga part )f the Sdnfchya laid already the foundation of 
all the absurd practices of idolatrous fakirs, as they are wit- 
nessed in the Ilindostan of our day. 

How long a time this remained the prevalent superstition of 
India, we do not know, as the country does not possess any 
more architectural remains of it than of the preceding Yedic 
period. But it is now proved beyond question that it merged 
finally into the open atfieistic pantheism of the Buddhists. 

IX. 

Until very recently nothing was known of the true origin of 
Buddhism. For a long time it was thought to be more recent 
than Christianity. Later on, the general opinion inclined to 
make it older even than [irnliniiiiisiu. But in 1828, Mr. B. H. 
Hodgson, British resident at the court of Nepaul, where Buddh- 
ism is the prevalent religion, discovered a voluminous compila- 
tion of Sanscrit manuscripts, which were found to be nothing 
else than what may be called the " sacred books " from which 
those of Thibet, Mongolia, and China were translated. The 
ones used in Ceylon, Burmah, Siam, etc., are in Pali, and agree 
in the main with the ISTepaulese manuscripts, although neither 
set is the translation of the other. 

Copies of this precious treasure, transported to London and 
Paris, attracted the attention of Orientalists, and Mr. Eugene 
Burnouf, after a serious study of those documents, published in 
1814 his " Introduction to the History of Buddhism." From 
that moment a public opinion, regarded now as final, was 
formed on the subject. 

The founder of this wide-spread superstition lived about six 
hundred years before. Christ. This is now ascertained — his 
name was Siddartha, son of a Hindoo Rajah, whose territory 
lay on the confines of Oude and ISTepaul. Siddartha belonged 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION IN HINDOSTAN. 157 



to the Sakya clan ; hence he is often called Sakya-muni, this 
last adjunct being equivalent to the Greek iiovaxog, from which 
monk is derived. He is yet of tener called Gautama, because 
the Sakya clan was a branch of the great " Solar " race of that 
name. Without entering into the details of the life of this 
prince, suffice it to say, that renouncing the world, and even 
the wife with whom he had lived twelve years, he retired into 
a forest and abandoned himself to the wild reveries of a Hin- 
doo ascetic. Brahminism, the religion of his family and ances- 
tors, he rejected forever, and falling back on the Sankya phi- 
losophy, then in full sway, he carried yet farther than any 
adept of that system the* principles of distaste for this life and 
its pleasures, of dread of almost endless and painful transmi- 
grations, and of ardent desire toward nirvana or total annihi- 
lation, no more by absorption in Brahma, which he rejected 
with the Hindoo Trimourti, but by returning into the univer- 
sal concatenation of causes and effects, the only god which 
henceforth he admitted. . . . Hence the frightful doctrine he 
began to advocate, became, at least for those who knew it thor- 
oughly and embraced it fully, an atheistic and destructive phi- 
losophy, the fully developed and altogether systematized San- 
kya doctrine. But for the great mass of people who were car- 
ried into the. whirlpool of this superstition, it became a real 
worship of man and the elements. Buddha (the enlightened), 
which was at first only a title given to the founder of the sys- 
tem — Gautama — became, in course of time, the real substitute 
for God in the mind of hundreds of millions of men ; and 
Buddha, or Lama, in Thibet, was any one who succeeded in 
making people believe that he was a real incarnation of a pre- 
vious Buddha, and for the mass of the people there was, and 
there is yet, no other God. 

It is not, therefore, true to say that 400,000,000 of the human 
race are professed atheists. The knaves of the sect, those who 
profit by the credulity of the people, and live on the abundant 



158 



GENTILISM. 



alms profusely given to religious mendicants, deserve truly to 
bear that odious name. But the masses of deluded people who 
prostrate themselves before the colossal idols of the country, or 
in front of living impostors surrounded with all the pomp of 
external worship, surely believe that they adore superior beings 
from whom they can expect blessings and happiness. They 
are consequently by no means atheists, though they can truly 
be called idolaters. Let not, therefore, the infidels of our day 
flatter themselves, as some of them do certainly, that they have 
numberless correligionists in far-off Tartary, unless they choose 
themselves to worship the idol Buddha. 

And this is so true that in the most ancient religious buildings 
of the sect, the subterranean rock temples of Bombay, chiefly the 
gigantic one of Salsette, together with the worship of Buddha, 
that of Siva, the god destroyer, is plainly indicated in the 
numerous reliefs of the adjacent temple of Monpeser. The 
correlation of both was so surprising to the first investigators of 
those antiquities who firmly believed in the perpetual antago- 
nism, from the start, of Jlindooism and Buddhism, that they 
thought they had found a strange case of two hostile creeds 
consenting to exist near each other in harmony. But it is 
known to-day that even in Thibet the triumphant Lainaism 
feels no opposition to the worship of Siva, whose adepts are 
numerous in the country, and join together the belief in nir- 
vana, and the adoration of the great symbol of destruction in 
Hindostan. 

Even in the rock temple of Elephanta, near Salsette, where 
the Trimourti begins to appear, Siva, however, being evidently 
the chief god, Buddha is also represented, according to Tang- 
ier — a very competent French authority. And it is worthy of 
mention here that the Lingam, in every possible form, shocks 
the eyes of the beholder ; so that those who have seen only the 
plates of Langles, 150 in number, say that " the obscenity dis- 
played on the walls surpasses everything that the most de- 



ABORIGINAL EELIGION IN HINDOSTAJST. 159 



praved European fancy could possibly imagine." — Monuments 
anciens et modernes de l'Inde. Paris, 1813. 

These temples belong to the primitive great architecture of 
Hindostan ; so that nothing has remained of the edifices raised 
in Yedic and following times, so far down as the sixth century 
before Christ. The country where they are found, so distant 
from the native place of the sect, is the only one in India where 
remains of Buddhist buildings are met with, if we except those 
of Ceylon, just at the other extremity of the peninsula. It is 
now ascertained that in this island the strange religion of Gau- 
tama is far later in time ; and it is from it that the worship of 
Buddha spread all over the country beyond the Ganges : China, 
Thibet, and some of the large islands of those distant seas ; par- 
ticularly Java, into which it penetrated only between the tenth 
and twelfth centuries of our era. 

Buddhism is, therefore, an Hindoo sect, and nothing else, con- 
temporaneous with the origin of pure idolatry in the country, 
but an offshoot of the atheistic and pantheistic Sankya philoso- 
phy. This is positively ascertained. How it disappeared from 
India proper is yet an unsolved problem. Was there a long 
straggle between the new sect and the old Brahminism, as it is 
generally supposed ? And was the exclusion of the new heresy 
the end of that struggle, as all until lately believed ? It seems 
reasonable to answer this last question affirmatively, as Brahmin- 
ism must have undoubtedly resisted the preponderance of a sys- 
tem destructive of castes, which do not exist properly in Buddh- 
ism. Yet the literature of Hindostan says absolutely nothing 
on the subject; and the existing monuments common to both 
seem to point in a contrary direction. There is no doubt that 
in India the worship of Buddha and that of Siva is indivisible ; 
yet worshippers of Siva belong often to the Brahmin caste. 

But — we must insist on this — what a fearful degeneracy 
from previous doctrines prevalent in the country ! How differ- 
ent the language of the first Vcdas, and the utterances of the 
12 



100 



GEXTILISM. 



new doctors ! What Las become of the sublime monotheism 
preached with such impressive eloquence ? How have tho 
noble patriarchal manners of the nation been replaced, where- 
ever Buddhism prevailed, by the unnatural and ungodlike celib- 
acy of myriads of deluded beings intent only on annihilation ! 
The most rigorous, austere, but at the same time vulgar and 
gross kind of life is strictly insisted on, as the chief condition 
for reaching "the other side of the road," that is to say, a state 
of absolute non-existence, free, at least, from the burden of 
further transmigration ! 

And as the worship of Siva was, at the beginning, intimately 
connected with the sect — we do not know precisely how ; 
as both are yet connected in Thibet, with all the apparent aus- 
terity of manners prevailing in that country — it is indeed sur- 
prising that the most flagrant and abandoned immorality has not 
yet eaten up the miserable nations bowed down under the yoke 
of those errors. The only- explanation which. can be given is, 
that human nature, with all its failings, is yet better than the 
absurd theories which try to degrade it ; and the Providence of 
God does not allow one-third of the human race to be plunged 
irremediably in the mire of the most foul superstitions. 

One feature of Buddhism chiefly has helped to prevent it 
from corrupting altogether the nations it keeps in darkness. It 
is the spirit of genuine benevolence it has always preached in 
the midst of the most immoral principles. The nations where 
Buddhism prevail, chiefly the Thibetan, are composed of two 
classes of persons ; the largest number seem to give up the 
hope of nirvana on account of the austere life required of 
those who aim at it. But another, large, certainly, in many 
countries, professes the accomplishment of the harsh austerities 
practised at first by Gautama himself, and imposed on all those 
who wish to escape future transmigration. They live in monas- 
teries, practise strict celibacy, dress very poorly, and subject 
themselves to a life compared to which that of a Christian 



ABOBIGINAL EELIGION IK HINDOSTAlsr. 161 



monk is pleasant indeed. Yet some travellers have tried to 
identify Buddhism with Christianity, or rather to degrade 
Christianity by the mere comparison. But both this class of 
people living in monasteries, and the larger one of those who 
remain in the world, are enjoined to practise unbounded be- 
nevolence toward all living beings, not men and women only, 
without exception of nationality and religion, but even toward 
senseless animals, even ferocious beasts, which are scarcely 
allowed to be killed in self-defence. Moreover, benevolence, 
or as we might say, charity, patience, courage, even self-abase- 
ment almost akin to Christian humility, and, what is yet more 
surprising, purity of morals, and the greatest restraint on the 
senses as being often causes of sin, are openly advocated. Yet, 
all this is not to be accomplished because God commands it, 
and threatens punishment on the evil-doers, but merely as a 
means of attaining annihilation in the next world, or, at least, 
of preparing a glorious and happy transmigration. An urgent 
motive, likewise, for those deluded people is the example of 
Gautama himself, who practised those virtues, they say, during 
his life, and recommended them to his followers after his death. 
In fact, he is for them God, since they acknowledge no superior { 
one, except the strict, fatal, irresistible, and unavoidable "con- 
catenation of causes and effects." 

We repeat, however, that for the great mass of those nations, 
the ritual of the worship is the chief object of their religious 
life, and this ritual is altogether pagan. The admirers of those 
eastern atheistic " philosophers " try their best to insist that the 
ritual is merely commemorative, and they do not, they say, adore 
the Buddha, nor the objects before which they prostrate them- 
selves ; but they do this in honor merely of the founder of their 
religion, whom they believe incarnated in the living representa- 
tive before their eyes. We answer, that for the mass of the 
people, such a commemorative worship is impossible. They 
adore in fact what is before them, and their earnest prayers are 



162 



GENTILISM. 



addressed to thii miserable impostor who persouates their Gau- 
tama. "It is improbable," they say, " that the original scheme 
of Buddhism contemplated either the adoration of the statues 
of the Buddha, or the offering of prayers to him after his death. 
These are an after-growth, an accretion upon the simple scheme 
of Gautama, and in a manner forced upon it during its struggle 
with other religions." This may be so, and the founder him- 
self, whoever he may be, might not have intended to originate 
an idolatrous sect, since he was himself an atheist. But so it 
has turned out to be; and we speak of what exists, not of what 
was the first project, if there was one. But the hold of that 
truly detestable superstition upon the many millions of Mongo- 
lians and East Indians is truly incredible, and can be understood 
only by those who have witnessed it. 

Last century a Catholic Bishop, missionary at Ava, in the 
Birman Empire, whose name we cannot now ascertain, having 
asked a Buddhist priest for some short treatise on the doctrines 
of Gautama, received a compendious manuscript, which stated 
that the founder of the sect had died 23G2 years before — a 
remarkable coincidence with the dicovery made by Mr. Eugene 
Burnouf — and which contained the chief points of Buddhism 
as we know them. But imagine the surprise of the bishop, who 
had left country and friends to convert the Burmese, reading 
the following address by which the manuscript ended : 

" Revolving these things in your mind, O ye English, Dutch, 
Armenians, and others, adore Gautama, the true god ; adore also 
his law and his priests. Be solicitous in giving alms, in the 
observance of Sila (which prepare for nirvana), and in 
performing Havana (by which the utter misery of life is 
acknowledged). . . . You have obtained, Bishop, a great 
favor, having been thought worthy, although born in one of 
the small islands depending on Zalmdiba, to come hither and 
to hear the truth of the divine law. This book is more worthy 
of esteem than gold and silver, than diamonds and precious 



ABOEIGINA.L RELIGION IK HIKDOSTAN. 



163 



stones, and I exhort all English, Dutch, Armenians, and others 
to act up to it." 

Max Miiller in a short lecture on " Buddhism," to the surprise 
of many, tries to create a very different impression. Carried 
away by his feelings in favor of a sect which, in his opinion, 
practises charity with as much generosity and devotedness as 
Christianity itself, he endeavors to vindicate it from the two 
damnable doctrines of atheism and annihilation ; but he is 
obliged to confess that on both points Eugene Burnouf — and he 
might have added with him all other actual writers on Buddh- 
ism — is against him. He himself quotes a passage of a 
Buddhist book of great authority, in which the invention of 
the existence of God — Brahma (neuter) — is attributed, as a 
piece of imposture, to Brahmin priests, and is openly rejected as 
false, so that Max Miiller himself cannot save Buddhism from 
the imputation of pure atheism. Of nirvana he is more confident 
that he can explaiu it away. But all he can say consists in this, 
that the common people of Buddhist countries do not consider 
it as real annihilation, but as an Elisian Paradise where every 
good thing is enjoyed. This is very possible ; and we believe 
it, since Mr. Miiller affirms it. The only conclusion we draw 
from it is, that the poor people of those countries are the dupes 
of knaves who know well the meaning of their books, but would 
be afraid of the complete desertion of the great mass of the 
population if they spoke openly. 

As to the Roman Catholic Bishop of whom Mr. Miiller 
speaks, not the same as the one we previously mentioned, who 
lately published a work, altogether in praise of the manners 
of the nation, in the midst of which he has lived a long time ; 
we can admit all he says, and not change our mind on Buddhism, 
because the Bishop spoke of the good life of many of these poor 
deluded men ; but said nothing in praise of the real doctrine 
which lay at the bottom of the imposture. 



164 



GENTILISM. 



X. 

This short history of Buddhism has showed us already, as 
contemporary with its origin, the idolatrous worship of Siva, if 
not of the whole Hindoo Trimourti. We are, therefore, natu- 
rally brought down a step further, and have to speak briefly of 
the introduction in Hindostan of pure idolatry — that is, the 
worship of the works of man, as the Book of Wisdom has it. It 
began certainly long after the Yedic times, and must have been 
gradually derived from the pantheistic doctrine of the Sunkya 
philosophy, joined with the previous Vedic rites and ceremo- 
nies, which finally became altogether misunderstood and misap- 
plied. Then poetry, as in Greece, completed the work. It is, in 
fact, acknowledged generally that the whole jumble of Hindoo 
mythology is the offspring of Sanscrit literature, as the history 
of the gods in Greece came from the fertile brain of Hesiod, 
and chiefly Homer. 

Herodotus tells us plainly that the mythology of his own 
country was, in his time, no more than four hundred years old, 
and had been fabricated by the epic poets. 

It is time that the poetry of the Hindoos was much earlier 
than the strictly idolatrous period. It is natural to the race, 
and existed among them from the very beginning. With them 
private conversation, even, is poetical, which would be intolera- 
ble among us. And their very digest of law, the code of Menu, 
is a highly imaginative production. It is said they have no 
historians ; yet they have, but of their own fashion. An his- 
torian, in their idea, ought not to be simply a cold narrator of 
events, but chiefly an embroiderer of facts. Bather facts, sim- 
ple facts, do not exist for them. They are accustomed to look 
at them, when they occur, under the most brilliant prismatic 
colors ; much more do they appear so to them long after they 
have taken place. Hence their historians became epic poets. 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION IN HINDOSTAN. 165 



But something ought to be said of their preparation for it ; 
since the great authors of the Bamayana and Mahabharata 
did not, and could not, appear directly after the compilation of 
the Yedas was finished. A long interval of time was evidently 
required. 

First, the great truths of their primitive religion, the tradi- 
tions they had received with the rest of mankind, the solemn 
rites embracing all the elements of nature as dedicated to the 
service of God, were not to remain in the strict line of ortho- 
doxy, since there was not among them any central power in- 
vested with spiritual authority to restrain every attempt of 
private thought from corrupting the original purity of their 
creed. Hence, as was seen of two great dogmas in particular, 
pure monotheism gradually merged into a broad and elevated 
pantheism at first, before reaching the scattered state of mere 
forces of natiore ; and the necessity of expiation for the soul 
took easily the shape of almost endless transmigration. From 
these two errors the majority of those which followed, can easily 
be derived. 

But the great " universal soul," the brilliant ai-ray of mate- 
rial beings concerned in " sacrificial rites :" fire, air, the dawn, 
the magnificent vault of heaven, etc., could not but take indi- 
vidual shapes in the imagination of the Hindoo, and thus the 
spiritual world became inhabited by a multitude of "devatas," 
which in course of time could not but be changed into real indi- 
vidual " gods." Brahma himself, the " universal soul," could 
not remain in his single blessedness ; but as creator, preserver, 
and destroyer, naturally w as transformed in the " Trimourti." 

How did the idea originate among them, that some deity 
ought to take a human shape and " dwell among us ?" We 
cannot say. Perhaps it was derived from the primitive tradi- 
tion about the One who was " to crush the head of the serpent." 
Perhaps it was merely the result of an exuberant fancy. But 
in their ideas of propriety it was not the head of the Trimourti, 



106 



GENTILISJU. 



so dignified in himself, nor the third member of it, the god 
of destruction, which could undertake a mission of salvation ; 
the second one, Vishnu, the preserver, was therefore to be the " in- 
carnate god ;" and as the Hindoos cannot understand moderation 
in fancy, as many as ten " avatars " of the god are known in 
their poetry. Tbe Sankya philosophy, with its austere doctrine 
of contempt of life and aspiration toward " deliverance ;" nay, 
the very extreme and absurd result of that philosophy, the aim- 
ing at complete destruction by the nirvana of Buddhism, had a 
strong poetical side which the Hindoos could not leave unem- 
ployed ; and thus their first great architectural art was all in 
honor of Buddha and Siva. 

This was the real origin of idolatry among them. Hence 
the horrible idol of Siva, the obscenity of its images, together 
with the unimpassioned, total apathy of the long face of Buddha, 
plunged in deep meditation, and looking vacantly into the 
void of nothingness, are the first mythological emblems offered 
by the poets of the period to the adoration of the wretched 
native of Hindostan. How fallen from his first state ! Let 
the loathsome remains of the astonishing rock temples of Ele- 
phanta and Salsette speak to the eyes, since no poem of that 
epoch has yet been found to astonish our awe-struck imagina- 
tions.* 

Bat this was too horrible to last. Hence the critics who 
have studied most successfully Sanscrit literature, tell us, that 
the worship of Siva, and of Buddha consequently, since both 
appear always connected together in the really primitive monu- 
ments of Hindostan, had to give way to that of Vishnu, less 
disgustingly sensual, and of far milder and gentler type. They 

* It seems that, during that period, the Sanscrit was not the idiom of 
lapidary style, since Niebuhr, who first described those wonderful monu- 
ments, has published long inscriptions found there, totally unintelligible 
to Sanscrit scholars. There is here, we think, the germ of a great dis- 
covery. 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION IN HINDOSTAN. 167 



speak of two sects, those of Siva and of Vishnu, straggling 
together for long ages, until the last conquered, and has ever 
since remained by far the most numerous in India. 

The brilliant authors at last appeared who were to celebrate 
for ever the names of a multitude of gods, worthy rivals of 
those of Homer and his compeers, and the ever-gushing well- 
spring of an art so well described by the author of the Book of 
Wisdom. 

Before speaking with some details of that luxuriant mythol- 
ogy of the Far-Orient, a word ought to be said on the precise 
epoch when this downward step in morality and intelligence 
took place among the Hindoos. We shall be surprised to find 
that it was exactly at tire time of their highest culture, of the 
most brilliant civilization for them, as the word goes. 

Mr. Hodgson and Eugene Burnouf are indeed to be called 
two great benefactors of mankind, since they have positively 
ascertained a date most important for the establishment of a 
sound doctrine : the first in discovering the documents, and the 
second in deciphering them. Buddhism is not older than six 
or seven hundred years before Christ; this the Nepaulese 
manuscripts assert, and the Burmese likewise which belong to 
the Ceylon or Bali class of manuscripts. 

But, by the common consent of all intelligent travellers and 
antiquaries, the Buddhist monuments in the Bombay Bresidency 
are incontestably the oldest of any architectural remains that 
exist in the country. At that epoch, certainly, the various 
incarnations of Vishnu were unknown. Siva, known undoubt- * 
edly, was not an "incarnate god," except, it seems, in much 
later times, when he had one or two avatars. Siva, therefore, 
at the time was merely an emblem, a revolting emblem cer- 
tainly, of cruelty and lust. Buddha, at that same epoch, was 
ascertained to have been Gautama, a great man, but merely a 
man, the son of a Rajah on the borders of Oude and ]STepaul. 
None of the numerous attendants sculptured on the monuments 



168 



GENTILISM. 



could be " incarnate gods," since avatars were as yet unimagined. 
These statues, consequently, could not have the sanctity which 
those of Vishnu, in the shape of Rama, or of Krishna, subse- 
quently possessed, in the eyes of the Hindoos. 

We may, therefore, safely conclude that, although pure 
idolatry had already begun to a certain extent, and many, no 
doubt, adored really Siva with his " collar of human skulls," 
and his other unmentionable emblems, yet in the strict sense of 
the word, pure idolatry existed only in an inchoate state. The 
pretended sanctity of sculptured or pictured representations, 
which was afterwards supposed to exist, and which formed the 
only sure ground of real idolatry, could not yet have entered 
f ully into the mind of the worshippers. 

The conclusion of it all is, that the poems of Ramayana and 
Mahabharata are not nearly as old as the sixth century before 
Christ, namely, about the age of Lycurgus at Sparta; and they 
alone have actually introduced in the country idolatry based on 
mythology. The rock temples at Ellora, in Central Ilindostan, 
were surely constructed after the period of the composition of 
the great epic poems, since most of the episodes narrated in 
those compositions are sculptured on the walls ; but the Buddh- 
istic system had already ceased to exist in the country, as 
there is not a single sign of it on those monuments. Artists, 
besides, and antiquaries easily recognize a much earlier style of 
art in the temples of the neighborhood of Bombay. The 
ruins at Ellora, consequently, and the Ramayana and Mahabha- 
Vata, are certainly much later than the sixth century before 
our era; and they give the first certain indications of pure 
idolatry in Hindostan. Buddhism, which preceded it, was a 
pure atheistic philosophical system, although it culminated like- 
wise ultimately in Sivaic idolatry, and was from the beginning 
associated with the image of Siva and its detestable emblems. 

From that epoch, temples or pagodas, as they are called, 
began to be constructed above the ground, and not to be hewn 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION" IN HINDOSTAN. 169 



oat of the liard rock under its surface. And in all those monu- 
ments, whose ruins may be said to cover now the country, the 
same stories are repeated which were first celebrated in the 
great epic poems, or in the episodes elaborated later from them 
in the puranas or tantras. And the most rank and abominable 
idolatry has certainly prevailed, and prevails yet, over the whole 
peninsula. Everywhere it is the Trimourti, and Siva, and Vishnu, 
and all the stories connected with the "avatars" or incarnations 
of this last god. 

It is important, therefore, to say a word of the Eamayana 
and the Mahabharata, out of which two poems has issued an 
exhaustless stream of incredible superstitions. The Rainayana 
is thought to be the oldest, is certainly the finest, and according 
to Sanscrit scholars merits to be compared with the Iliad of 
Homer. It can be read easily through, since it contains only 
thirty thousand verses ; and there are in it certainly great 
literary beauties. But what gave it its subsequent importance 
in the religion of the country is the poetical halo it throws 
around the incarnation of Vishnu in Kama. Vishnu, or God 
as Preserver, became Rama, a mere mortal, and henceforth his 
history could be sculptured or painted on walls and canvas, 
and men began to adore the works of the statuary or painter. 
Thus, according to the Book of Wisdom, " the creatures of God 
were turned to an abomination and a temptation to the souls of 
men, and a snare to the feet of the unwise." And thus, " by 
the vanity of men idols came into the world. . . . And in pro- 
cess of time, wicked custom prevailing, this error was kept as a* 
law ;• and statues were worshipped by the commandment of 
tyrants." (Wisdom, Chap, xiv.) 

Poetry and art were, therefore, the origin of pure idolatry in 
Hindostan, as they were in Greece ; and, in both countries, this 
happened at about the same time, and during an age of advanced 
civilization and most luxurious living. The primitive clanship of 
heroic times had given way in Greece to numerous aristocracies 



170 



GET5TTILISM. 



bearing the name of free States ; and in India the tribal system 
of the \ r edic, that is, patriarchal period, was succeeded by the 
already extensive Empires of Ayoclhya and Mathura. In Greece, 
dining what is called the barbarous epoch, the prevailing 
religion was to a great extent monotheistic, as will be illustrated 
later. But great poets introduced all the gods of mythology, 
worshipped later, in the period of the highest culture and refine- 
ment. Precisely the same thing happened in Ilindostan, 
and at about the same time, as is evident from the ascertained 
origin of Buddhism. 

The great Mahal iharata poem, far inferior to the Ramayana 
in point of style and interest — of an interminable length, for it 
contains one hundred thousand verses, evidently the work of 
several authors, and on that account altogether episodical — is yet 
of extreme importance on account of the varied matter con- 
tained in it; on which account it may bear the name of 
Encyclopaedia, as well as on account of the fanciful details 
of mythology it contains. It became, therefore, together with 
the Ramayana, the great source of delusion for the people of a 
great country — a delusion the more remarkable because of the 
great respect which continued to be paid to the venerable Vedas, 
which are everywhere spoken of in the poems as the true source 
of pure religion. Hence the Brahmins themselves, those per- 
petual readers of the primitive religious books, having at the 
same time their imagination full of the impure fancies of the 
Ramayana, forgot altogether the true sense of the old worship, 
and became as degraded idolaters as the populace itself, and 
intent only on the exterior rites of worship. 

The corruption of morals which naturally followed the intro- 
duction of impure emblems, could not but increase the degrada- 
tion of intellect which always accompanies lust. It has been 
already remarked that the lingam never appears in the Vedic 
period, and that it came into Hindostan with the worship of 
Siva. The same we shall have occasion to remark of Egypt, 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION IN HINDOSTAN. 171 



where the phallus is never seen in the temples of Ethiopia ; 
and nothing can better explain the degeneracy of mind in both 
countries than the reckless profligacy which must have been 
caused by throwing before the eyes of every man, woman, and 
child, yea, by placing constantly into their hands, as was cer- 
tainly the case in Egypt, the disgusting object known under 
those names. Let any one read the description of those im- 
mense processions of as many as 700,000 people, related by 
Herodotus in his second book, and he will easily understand 
how the most austere, sublime, and intellectual religion of 
early ages, became the mass of corruption and profligacy which 
any one may witness who should visit Hindostan, and assist at 
many of the pretended religious festivals. 

"We. ought not, consequently, to be surprised that the worship 
of animals became prevalent in India, as well as in Egypt. For 
there is no doubt that the people adore there the bird which 
Vishnu rides, as well as the elephant-shaped Ganesa, and the 
ape — Hanuman. It is true that the admirers of mythological 
worship excuse the idea under the plea that they are " divine 
animals " — thus speak nearly all modern critics. But unfortu- 
nately those " divine animals," as objects of actual worship, 
are far from elevating and refining the ideas and habits of the 
Hindoo people. And if we remember rightly, Miss Maria Gra- 
ham, in her " Journal of a Residence in India," complains that 
those rites she herself witnessed, were far from coming up to 
the exalted ideas she had previously formed of pagan worship 
as transmitted to us from Egypt and Greece. It is true that 
if the same British lady had been present at Bubastis with 
Herodotus, in a country where "divine animals" were also wor- 
shipped ; and had she seen what he describes in his Second 
Book — " Euterpe " — she might very probably have experienced 
the same disgust, and changed her opinion on the refining ele- 
gance of pagan rites of any kind. But such is the education 
well-bred people of our day receive and derive from their 



172 



GE!NTILISM. 



" classical studies." We will not certainly invite them to look 
at the plates given to the public by Langles from the rock-tem- 
ples of Elephanta. It is enough for them, as well as for us, to 
remember the words of Ileeren we have already quoted on the 
subject. 

But we have not yet reached the bottom of that unima<rin- 
able corruption originated by the mythology of the great poems. 
These were to be followed by the puranas and tantras, on which 
our limits do not allow us to say more than a word. Both are 
now the " main foundation of the actual popular creed of the 
Mrahminical Hindoos;" and on this account they deserve atten- 
tion. It is the last term of that "series" of which we spoke 
previously, which began by pure monotheism, and which ends 
in the present "abominations" of India.. 

It seems that there were originally eighteen puranas of a 
high antiquity, of which some Sanscrit works of the Vedic 
period speaks. But they have disappeared; and if in the pura- 
nas now existing there are any fragments or shreds of them 
surviving their destruction, it is absolutely impossible to dis- 
tinguish them and point them out in the modern compositions. 
The late Professor II. II. Wilson, an eminent Sanscrit scholar, 
who studied, edited, and translated the eighteen puranas which 
now remain, was of opinion that the age of their appearance 
falls within the twelfth and seventeenth centuries of our era, 
with the exception of one of them, which, on account of its 
" unsectarian character," as the Professor expresses it, he would 
place between the ninth and tenth. They are, therefore, quite 
recent. Yet, to a great number of Brahmins, they replace en- 
tirely the Yedas, although it is admitted by modern critics that 
even a slight examination and a hasty comparison of them with 
the ancient books containing the primeval lore of Hindoo .relig- 
ion and science, is sufficient to convince every one tl'at the 
description of religious life they unfold is simply a misrepre- 
sentation of that afforded by the Yedic literature. 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION IN HINDOSTAW". 173 



Of their general purport it is enough to say, that some advo- 
cate the worship of Yishnu, and others that of Siva ; and sev- 
eral of them propose chiefly to the adoration of their disciples 
the female energy of the god they place at the head of the 
Hindoo pantheon. This is called in Sanscrit Sakti, which is 
generally translated by the word " wife." But it is, indeed, 
the god himself, originally hermaphrodite, as many statues of 
Siva exemplify, and who is considered either as male or as 
female by his deluded worshippers. The wife, or female en- 
ergy of Yishnu, is called Sri or Lakshmi / and the name of 
that of Siva is Durga. In either case it may be called the 
concentrated spirit of the particular deity under considera- 
tion, as the female activity is known to be more energetic. 
Thus to speak of Siva, Durga represents all the fury of which 
the god of destruction and of lust is capable ; for Siva is, in- 
deed, the diabolical emblem of both. Durga, therefore, is the 
great object and the last term at which all Hindoo mythology 
and religiotis rites must aim, and fatally terminate. And this 
is the purpose of some at least of the puranas. 

But this is the only, entire, and absolute purpose of the abom- 
inable tantras, which are yet oftener in the hands of the mod- 
ern Brahmins than the puranas themselves. And strange to say, 
these books seem or look to be much older than the actual pura- 
nas. Everything appears to be in favor of such a supposition. 
Yet their name — the very word " tantra," as a particular reli- 
gious work, is never mentioned except in quite recent times, 
even in Sanscrit glossaries of classical words. The modern 
critics who have examined them most carefully cannot account 
for this apparent contradiction. In our opinion, an easy solu- 
tion of the problem is found in the character of those infamous 
books. They must have formerly circulated secretly, and not 
have been allowed to be known except to a few. 

It is impoi tant to examine them more closely than the pura- 
nas themselves, as they express in fact the last phase of the 



174 



GENTILISM. 



religion of Hindostan, and prove truly more forcibly than, 
aught else could do, how entirely the primitive patriarchal rites 
of the great Hindoo nation were destroyed by polytheism, 
which is tbe main object of this chapter. 

Tuntra means, literally, an instrument or means of faith : " It 
is," say the modern Sanscrit lexicographers, "a name given 
to the sacred works of the female energy of the god Siva." 
Tbe underline is ours. The definition cannot be plainer and 
more appropriate. Siva is the god of destruction and of lust. 
The liugam is his perpetual emblem. His female energy — 
Durga — is the rage of both. For rage expresses the maniac 
activity of a furious woman. What can be the sacred works of 
such things? Let our reader imagine it. We cannot ourselves 
describe it. Yet we must say something of it, however unwil- 
lingly ; otberwise our very purpose would be somewhat frus- 
trated. 

Tbe tantras are books which comprise many subjects. Some 
of these are, of course, the creation and destruction of the 
world; the worship of the gods; the attainment of all objects, 
etc., etc. But the chief one is a long detail of " magical rites 
for the acquirement of six superhuman faculties, and four 
modes of union with spirits by meditation." Devil-worship 
and spiritism are already visible enough. The votaries of this 
abominable religion are called Sacktas, and nothing is more 
common than to meet them everywhere in the country, chiefly 
in Bengal. Many belong to the Brahminical class. But those 
of other castes are easily admitted to that Hindoo freema- 
sonry which has also for its device something akin to the 
modem motto, " Fraternity, equality." They do not, however, 
conceal themselves in our days, and take good care to besmear 
their forehead with lines of red sandal-wood or vermilion, and 
a circular spot of red at the root of the nose. Being openly 
worshippers of the female energy of Siva, which typifies all 
that is excessively terrific and obscene, our readers need not be 



ABORIGINAL EELIGIOK EST HINDOSTAN. 175 



told what are their rites. They naturally lead to. brutalism, 
and involve the grossest immorality of all kinds. 

It seems, however, that there is a limit to shamelessness in 
some of those Brahmins, since they form two sects : the adher- 
ents to the right-hand, and the left-hand, ritual. The first are 
less degraded, and probably never imbrue their hands in the 
blood of innocent children, as many are suspected of doing. 
Yet these, even, are known to offer blood without causing 
death ; and in the case of animals, to sacrifice annually num- 
bers of kids and goats, a practice totally abhorrent to the well- 
known benevolent feelings of Hindoos toward all living beings. 
But the left-hand ritual is altogether unmentionable. A quota- 
tion from Professor Wilson may, however, be introduced : 
" All the forms of the ritual require "the use of some or all of 
five words, beginning with M, namely : Mansa, Mataya, Madya, 
Maithuna, and Mudra — L e., flesh, fish, wine, women, and ob- 
scene gesticulations." " But," he adds, " when the object of 
the ceremony is to acquire an interview with, or control over, 
impure spirits, a dead body is necessary. The adept is also to 
be alone, at midnight, in a cemetery or place where bodies are 
burned and buried, or criminals executed." ..... We cannot 
conclude the quotation, which is nevertheless only a repetition 
of the well-known diabolical rites generally ascribed to the 
devil-worshippers of the middle ages. It is enough to say, 
with him, that " the whole is terminated with the most scan- 
dalous orgies among the votaries." 

It is strange after this, that the learned Professor should pre- 
tend that, "In justice to the doctrines of the sect, it is to be 
observed, that these practices, if instituted merely for sensual 
gratification, are held by these sectarians to be as illicit and rep- 
rehensible as in any other branch of the Hindoo faith." We 
will merely ask how such " practices" as these can be supposed 
free from " sensual gratification " of the grossest and most 

abominable nature ? 
13 



176 



GENTILISM. 



We admire profoundly the benevolent feelings of most 
writers of our age who always try their best to excuse the 
most hateful excesses of polytheistic superstition. But, to us, 
vice is vice ; and pure devil-worship, as this undoubtedly is, 
cannot be justified under any pretext, and must always be 
absolutely condemned as the highest crime and most horrible 
abommation. 

The demonstration, we hope, is complete. The progress in 
India, from the beginning, has been constantly backwards. 
The nation began with pure monotheism, and ends in deviltry. 
The noble picture of venerable rishis and patriarchs living in 
devout simplicity in the first ages, is replaced by the ignoble 
aspect of degraded adepts in witchcraft and the lowest super- 
stition ; and the gradual steps by which this unfortunate result 
was attained, appear clear and convincing in the whole history 
<if this extraordinary people. Contrary to the dogmas of Dar- 
winism, the Hindoo type, at first so noble and almost godlike, 
has followed an inverse evolution, which might, if not arrested, 
end in something very like the type of the ape and gorilla. 
Not that the physical features of the species can, in om 
opinion, be radically changed even inversely, and become 
those of a quite different species, of a much lower and de- 
graded type. But morally the change is almost equivalent to 
it ; and, in the words of the Prophet, we might exclaim : 
" Quomodo cecidisti, Lucifer, qui mane oriebaris ! '' 

"We will conclude this chapter with a word or two on a fea 
ture remarkable, certainly, in the actual idolatry of Hindostan. 
In reading the works of well-informed English travellers, when 
they profess to describe the popular religion, one is struck with 
the constantly-changing names of the gods in passing from one 
town or village to another. This is certainly very striking in 
the long and detailed account of Mysore and the Malabar coast 
undertaken by Buchanan, at the request of the East India Com- 
pany, after the conquest of that part of the country by the 



ABORIGINAL RELIGION IN HIND STAN". 177 



English and the fall of Tippoo Saib. In every village, as you 
read, you find the people at the foot of some idol altogether 
unknown to the common Hindoo mythology. And the names 
of these gods are seldom the same. So that the conclusion forces 
itself upon the mind, that besides the celebrated deities wor- 
shipped chiefly in large towns, there is an infinite number of 
inferior ones known only to villagers and rude people. The 
country, therefore, has arrived to that point of " individual- 
ism " in religion which will strike us more forcibly when we 
speak of Egypt, Greece, and Italy. But of this anon. 

The primitive religion of Central Asia being intimately con- 
nected with that of Hindostan, we had thought of speaking of 
it at the end of this chapter. But on account of its length we 
prefer to transfer it at the head of the next. The reader will 
perceive where the natural connection lies; and the details 
will sufficiently point it out. 



CHAPTER IY. 



THE riUMEVAL RELIGION, AND ITS DECLINE, IN CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 
SECTION I. — CENTRAL ASIA. 

A few years back, the exact time of the great " reform " 
of Zoroaster was unknown ; or rather the general belief con- 
cerning it was incorrect. Owing to several mistakes of previous 
chronologists, Zoroastrianisin was thought to be a great deal 
more recent than it really is ; and had it not been for the labors 
and discoveries of several orientalists of our days, the common 
error could not have been corrected, and the arguments we have 
adduced in support of the primitive monotheism of Ilindostan 
would have been the only ones possible. They might have 
sufficed, certainly, but a more exact knowledge of Asiatic 
antiquities, and the true interpretation of the Zend-Avesta, 
enable us to add to them a much more powerful one, which the 
plan we have adopted will oblige us to confine within as narrow 
a compass as is compatible with a satisfactory exposition of it. 

We have already hinted that the Zends were not Persian 
books, but truly V.edic ; and that if we still follow the old 
distinction, and consider them apart, it is merely for the sake 
of convenience. "We must, in the first instance, establish this 
truth, most important in our present considerations. 

The author of the Zend-Avesta, or at least of the oldest part 
of it — the Gathas — since it was compiled, as it woidd seem, 
like the Y.edas, by several authors, — Zoroaster, or in the old 
spelling, Zaratliustra, has himself described very accurately 
the vast region which is to be now the object of our investiga- 
tion. The Yendidat begins by an enumeration of the provinces 
(178) 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFEICA. 



179 



and chief cities governed by King Gustasp — -or rather Vistagpa, 
according to the correct orthography — to whom the book is 
addressed, and, indeed, dedicated. The list includes all the 
countries east of the Caspian Sea and north of Hindostan, with 
the northern part of this peninsula, besides Azerbijan west of 
the Caspian Lake. A glance over the map will show that it 
embraced Khorasan, Bactriana, and Sogdiana, Cabul, Lahore, 
and the Punjaub, with several other provinces of less renown. 
Nothing absolutely is said m the booh, either of Persia or of 
Media even. King Gustasp's — Yistacpa's — Capital was evi 
dently Bactra. The centre of his empire was the country 
included between the Oxus and the Jaxartes. It was, therefore, 
precisely Central Asia. None of the southern regions of the 
continent belonged to it. Knowing, as we do, that the Yedas 
came from the north of PI indostan, the remark is important. 
The Yedas, in fact, and the Zends were literary productions of 
the same country almost. The Zends, therefore, were not Per- 
sian books. 

I. 

The apparent similarity of the name of Grustasp with Darius 
Hystaspis, had been a sufficient reason for the antiquarians of a 
previous age to presume that Zoroaster lived under his reign. 
Yet many Greek writers had asserted that this Sage, whom they 
all admired as one of the greatest men our world had seen, 
belonged to an epoch far earlier than the Persian, or even than 
the Median dynasties. Aristotle went so far as to state that he 
lived 6000 years before his own time ; Xanthus of Lydia was 
therefore very moderate in placing him 600 years before the 
Trojan war ; Berosus of Babylon made him a Babylonian King 
corresponding with an epoch equivalent to about 2000 years 
before Christ. ISTow that the Zend-Avesta is well known, 
and has been correctly translated, the general opinion makes 



180 



GENTILISM. 



him at least contemporary with Moses. It is clear that we have 
here a hook of very .high antiquity, and that its doctrines must 
represent the thoughts of men very near the origin of our 
species. It was Anquetil Duperron, a Frenchman, who first 
brought a copy of it to Europe, ahout the middle of last 
century; and although his translation was very defective, owing 
to the backwardness of philology at the time, it produced an 
immense sensation. The English promptly accused it of being 
a forgery. The Germans, more equitable, were at first divided 
in opinion, but Klenker having translated it into German, its 
genuineness was generally admitted beyond the Rhine. It is 
Bask, a Dane, who having procured many Zend manuscripts for 
the Copenhagen library, showed conclusively the close affinity 
between the language of the Zends and the Sanscrit. But it is 
again Mr. Eugene Bumouf who determined several important 
points, admitted now generally by all orientalists, which clearly 
show the intimate relation of the Zends with the Yedas, 
establish the character of the first as a " reform " intended to 
bring back the second to their old pure monotheism, and deter- 
mine many points which we may be allowed to set forth in 
the following catechetical form : 

1st. Is the book really as ancient a production as has been just 
stated ? It was not certainly written so as to circulate, at the 
time mentioned above ; but was transmitted orally, as the Yedas, 
the Homeric poems, the Talmud, etc. At the beginning, undoubt- 
edly, it was much more voluminous than at present. Pliny 
speaks of 2,000,000 verses written by Zoroaster, which must be 
an exasperation common enough with the author of " Ilistoria 

CO O 

Xaturalis." But a great part of the work perished in the 
frightful invasion of Omar in Persia, and what was saved was 
collected together only under the Sassanian Kings, in the third 
century of our era. These are real difficulties. Nevertheless, 
the style of a good part of what remains is truly Yedic. Who- 
ever understands the Yedas will easily understand it. These 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFEICA. 



181 



books must have been transmitted with the extreme precision 
and caution always attached to ritual prayers ; for such they are 
mostly. We have, therefore, an authentic, most ancient work. 
The language is somewhat different from the Sanscrit, but 
certainly of the same type. The verses are truly Vedic verses, 
without rhyme, and with the syllables only counted. Ail 
modern orientalists seem to agree on this first point. 

2d. Is the doctrine of monotheism as clear in the Zends as 
in the Yedas ? The answer is plain, almost emphatic : It is 
clearer and more precise. From many expressions of the 
Zend-Avesta., it is evident that the nation to which Zoroaster 
belonged had been previously connected intimately with 
another Aiyan nation. But a long war had raged between both ; 
enmity at the time of Zoroaster reigned supreme. The 
chief cause of complaint on the part of the Sage himself was, 
that the primitive religion of the people had been corrupted by 
this now hostile race. The pure worship of one God, admitted 
at first on both sides, had been gradually replaced by the wor- 
ship of devas, and Zoroaster wished to bring back his nation 
to primeval monotheism. Thus the Baetrian patriarch was 
merely a reformer, in the true sense of the word. From the 
same text it appears that, since the introduction of corrupt 
worship, the people of Gustasp had been under the guidance 
of " fire priests," who had established a false religion known 
under the name of " ahura," because inferior spirits, called 
" ahuras," were adored instead of the £t devas" of the enemy. 
Zoroaster declared himself against both, and proposed the wor- 
ship of Ormuzd — Ahura-Mazda — alone, which he emphatically 
proclaimed as the old worship of both nations. 

We recognize clearly in the " devas " of the enemy the 
"devatas" honored in the Vedic sacrifices, to which Zoro- 
aster objected as making mere creatures real "gods." We 
may also conclude from this warm hostility the motive which 
led Zoroaster to give to the Supreme God, not the name of 

\ 



182 



GE2TTILISM. 



Brahma, but that of Qrmuzd — Ahura-Mazda. lie wished to 
have aothing to do with the Hindoo religion. And, moreover, 
the l:inmiaa;e in which he wrote had then become, to a certain 
degree, a different one from the Sanscrit of the Yedas, although 
closely allied to it. Other proofs of the Zend monotheism will 
presently be given. Before passing to the next point, we may 
here repeat that India has been, indeed, the centre of all 
the religions of Asia, as Ileeren asserts. We have seen how 
Buddhism, which has since prevailed all over the Far-East, was 
derived from the Hindoo philosophy. And, now, we notice 
another curious fact : The Brahminic religion becoming the 
source of the worship of all Western Asia, where Zoroastrian- 
isni prevailed in the end, through the Medians and Persians, 
in Assyria, Babylonia, and a great part of Asia Minor ; and that 
it might have ruled even over a great part of Europe, if Persia 
had not been defeated by Greece at Marathon and Salamis. 
It is even pretended by some orientalists that the religion of 
Zoroaster was the true source of the only three great monothe- 
istic systems, embracing nearly all the Semitic nations : namely, 
Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism. But this is an 
evident error. And every candid observer will easily acknowledge 
that neither Judaism, nor chiefly Christianity, not even Moham- 
medanism, have taken their dogmas from the creed of Zoroaster ; 
although there is no doubt that manv truths contained in this 
last, form also a part of the three others ; because they are truths 
coming from God, and not because Zoroaster originated them. 
He insists himself on this: that he is a reformer, not an inventor 
of religion. The opinion, therefore, of Sir William Jones, that 
mankind originated probably in Iran — Persia — and that the 
first study to which an orientalist ought to apply is that of the 
Persian language, as it is from that country that the truth 
radiated from the beginning, is not substantiated ; and the 
very respectable founder of the Asiatic Society would, no 
doubt, have changed his opinion, had he known what a 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



183 



more advanced study of Sanscrit and Zend has now demon- 
strated. 

3d. What is the part of monotheism and that of " sacrificial 
rites " in Zoroaster's religion % The answer is plain again from 
the late discoveries in the text of the Zend-Avesta. There is 
much less room with respect to both, for error to creep in, 
than in the Yedas, as we' know them ; and, consequently, the 
pantheism, polytheism, and devilish idolatry which invaded 
Hindooism never made inroads of such frightful import in the 
worship of the Parsees, for Manieheism can scarcely be con- 
sidered as a branch of this religion. The imagination of the 
northern tribes, over which Gustasp ruled, being more sober 
and guarded, the pure sparks of the heavenly doctrine which 
we have admired in the Vedas, were not in Central Asia so 
easily dimmed by vague expressions containing seeds of manifest 
error. Hence, its monotheism resembled much more the true, 
solid, always, consistent doctrine of the Hebrew prophets 
independently of their inspiration. There has been, however, 
a great decline in Zoroastrianism, which it will be our duty to 
notice. 

II. 

The Divine Unity in the person of Ormuzd — (Ahura-Mazda) 
— and the height of His divine attributes, are expressed in the 
Gathas — the most authentic part of the Zends — with a supreme 
energy which cannot be misunderstood. The multiplicity of 
passages which contain them, their agreement together, and the 
identity of interpretation by the most learned and skillful trans- 
lators, cannot leave room for hesitation and doubt. The name 
itself, Ahura-Mazda (Ormuzd) signifies, according to Mr. Hang, 
(Essays, p. 256) the Living Creator of the Universe. The most 
common appellations by which He is addressed are in the in- 
terpretation of the same gentleman, and of Mr. Spiegel, the last 



184 



GENTILISM. 



translator of the Zends : " The living God — the Good Spirit — 
the Sublime Truth — the Creator of Life — the Essence of Truth 
— the Primordial Spirit — the Source of Light — the most Holy 
Spirit — the Creator of all that is good — the Author of the 
World and of Law — the most Powerful of Beings. .It is He 
who has traced to the sun and the stars their road in the 
heavens; it is lie who brings on the increase and decrease of 
the moon ; it is Lie who has created the earth, the ocean, the 
trees, etc., etc." 

It is precisely thus that we speak of God. Zarathustra, since 
his name ought, it seems, to be thus spelt, bad received from 
tradition the true key-note of religious truth. lie said, bim- 
self, that be had invented nothing ; but merely restored the 
primitive belief obscured by the new worship of devas. In 
him we find, therefore, a great link of the golden chain, which 
starting first from the mouth of God, was often on the point of 
b&ing broken and lost, until Christ secured it fpr us for ever, 
by handing it over to His infallible Church. Evidently the 
Baetrian Sage spoke as we do, and believed as we do, with 
respect to God. He appeared when the purity of doctrine, 
first contained in the Vedas, began to be dimmed by poetry and 
imagination ; and devatas, or devas, as he called them, were 
insensibly personified, and turned into personal beings and 
deities ; to protest against tbis invasion of the rights of the Su- 
preme and Living Author of the Universe ; and all the terms by 
which he expressed his essence and .attributes, were precisely 
those we employ ourselves, and wbich will be used henceforth 
to the end of time. 

Hear one of the hymns of Zarathustra, translated in German 
by Mr. Spiegel, to which Max Miiller gave an English dress. 
(It is taken from Spiegel's Tasna, p. 146). 

" I ask Thee ; tell me the truth, Ahura ! Who was from 
the beginning the father of pure creatures ? Who has made 
a path for the sun and for the stars? Who, but Thou, makes 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



185 



the moon to increase and to decrease % That, O Mazda, and 
other things I wish to know. 

' " I ask Thee ; tell me the truth, O Ahura ! Who holds the 
earth and the clouds that they do not fall ? "Who holds the 
sea and the trees ? Who has given swiftness to the wind and 
the clouds ? Who is the creator of the good spirit ? 

" I ask Thee ; tell me the truth, O Ahura ! Who has made 
the kindly light and the darkness ? Who has made the kindly 
sleep and the awaking ? Who has made the mornings, the 
noons, and the nights ? Who has made him who .ponders on 
the measure of Thy laws ?" 

In perusing this passage, which is only one of many, the Chris- 
tian may well imagine he is listening to fresh strains of the in- 
spired Moses, Job or David ! With respect to " sacrificial rites," 
a greater precision of language than that of the Yedas, serves in 
the Zends to render much less imminent the danger of intro- 
ducing polytheism through them. In the Y~azna of the Zend- 
Avesta, where the five Gathas, of which we just spoke, are 
contained, and which treat of "sacrifice," "devatas" are not 
addressed, as in the Yedas, and cannot so easily be transformed 
into " gods." But the ritual contains merely " prayers for the 
consecration of holy water, of the bundle of twigs used in the 
rites, of the liquor extracted from the plant called homa — the 
soma of Hindostan — or of anything connected with the sacri- 
fice." Thus it is only a blessing bestowed on some object 
which is set apart for the service of God, exactly as in the 
Catholic ritual prayers are directed to be said over water, oil, 
frankincense, etc. And thus the rites of Zoroastrianism be- 
come plain, and are void of the least clanger of obscuring the 
pure monotheism advocated everywhere in the Zends. For- 
tunately, moreover, for our argument, their intimate connection 
with the corresponding forms of the Yedas, in which we find 
also blessings for fire, for water, for the soma, liquor, of which 
we had an occasion to speak previously, explain the original 



186 



GENTILISM. 



meaning oi the Hindoo books, and show conclusively the trath 
of onr preceding remarks on those rites, and the appropriateness 
of onr protest against the translation of the word " devata " 
into that of " god ;" at least as it was understood primitively ; 
and thus onr assertion was limited. From the need of a " re- 
form," so early as the time of Zarathnstra, it seems the decline 
to error began sooner than we might otherwise have imagined. 
Yet it may be supposed that the zeal of the " reformer " was 
kindled at the veiy first innovations, and perhaps at the inter- 
pretations the people alone gave to " sacrificial rites," when the 
pure Yedic meaning was well understood by the learned Brah- 
mins. These, however, are mere conjectures on which we do 
not insist. 

But we must here introduce a few remarks on the ritual of 
ancient religions in general, whether true or false. In all the 
new forms given by Protestantism to Christianity, the ritual is 
absent, or, if there is some remnant of it, it is merely a shred. 
In the old religions, it was always extremely elaborate ; and 
we may say thati.the older a religion is the more complicated 
is the ritual. Could this be the effect of barbarism in man, 
as everything old is often considered as barbarous ? And is a 
religion deprived of a ritual, on that account, more refined and 
true? 

The Jewish ritual, given by God Himself, as we firmly be- 
lieve, is certainly very copious and long. The Christian ritual 
in the true Church is, undoubtedly, much more simple and far 
less complex. Authors generally attribute the difference, in . 
the first case (that of the Jews), to the necessity of striking 
their imagination, and obliging them to many small observ- 
ances, and of thus opposing their proneness to idolatry. It 
might be so in part. Yet it is undoubtedly true that the 
rituals adopted, from the beginning, by all nations of antiquity, 
were all of a very elaborate nature, and contained as many 
apparently trifling prescriptions as the one of Leviticus. And 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFEICA. 



187 



this did not prevent them from falling into many grievous 
errors. Nay, it was not unseldom the cause of leading them 
to polytheism, as it certainly was in the case of the Hindoos. 
A reason more consonant with the doctrine of several Fathers 
of the Church, and among them, we think, St. Leo the Great 
and St. Irenseus. is the difference of the three dispensations of 
nature, law, and grace, which required differences of worship 
and rites. To our thinking, the patriarchal religion adapted 
to men who were, in truth, giants intellectually, required 
strong, vivid, and varied rites, because their powerful minds 
must have been swayed by a correspondingly powerful imagi- 
nation, which had to be occupied with the things of God in 
order to avoid the danger of plunging headlong into the things 
of this world, as all did sooner or later. If the Jewish patri- 
archs, from Abraham downwards, used much more simple 
rites, they were certainly exceptions in the general state of 
things at the time. Being frequently in direct communica- 
tion with Almighty God, who treated them as friends, and 
whom they loved ardently, there was no need, for them, of so 
many slight observances and prescriptions. But there is no 
doubt that, when they lived on earth, all other nations of Asia 
were subjected to extremely complicated religious rites, which, 
on account of their uniformity, ought to be considered, in the 
main, as handed down to them by primitive tradition ; and the 
only reason we can assign for this is the one mentioned above. 

The Jewish nation, according to many Fathers of the 
Church, were kept under a rigorous dispensation, and bound 
hands and feet, from morning to night, at all hours of the day 
by observances of every kind, because they were children 
kept under the rod, and trained to better things by a harsh 
treatment necessary for their long education. 

But to suppose that the dispensation of grace, the everlast- 
ing and final religion of Christ, was to leave us without a 
ritual of any kind, is to fall into an egregious errcr. Man 



188 



GENTILISM. 



wants it; and if he emancipates himself entirely, or almost 
entirely, from it, under the pretext that we live under the dis- 
pensation of love, and are free from all the restraints of the 
law, he is most likely, in the course of time, to forget God alto- 
gether, and to lose completely, not only the exterior, but the 
very spiritual essence of religion. The man who belongs to a 
sect without rites, will soon be practically without God ; be- 
cause, owing to the double nature of man, prayer itself requires 
the elevation or joining of the hands, the bending of the 
knees, the raising of the eyes to heaven, or other acts of Ijodily 
worship. And all these are real rites, and without them prayer 
itself would soon cease to exist. 

If Christ has freed us from the law, it is merely from the 
Mosaic ceremonial law. But lie gave to His Church a true 
legislative power. And this Mother of all true Christians, 
knowing their wants and understanding their nature, yet aware 
of their native weakness, although living under the dispensa- 
tion of "grace" (which, according to St. Paul, was instituted 
for men, and no more for babes, as the Jews were), this Mother 
Church, with the unlimited power given her by Christ, has, 
from the very beginning, instituted rites which, with the ever- 
increasing number of the faithful, have grown to the imposing 
forms we all know so well, and we love to witness daily, in 
the ever-recurring round of our festivals through the Christian 
year. 

And, although the Mosaic law is abolished, although the 
patriarchal religion has long ago ceased to exist, yet we have 
still many points of similarity with the "men of old;" and we 
use yet all the elements to praise our Creator, because we wor- 
ship the same God and inhabit the same earth. Our Holy 
religion is the true one ; and as that of the patriarchs was in 
the same position in their time, there must be some points, at 
least, of resemblance between both. 

It is time to return to Zoroastrianism, or rather to Mazdeisra, 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



189 



as it is now called ;. and we must begin to adopt the general 
way of speaking of our contemporaries. Was not Mazdeism, 
from the very time of its first expounder, impregnated with 
dualism, and consequently not teaching pure monotheism ? 
To what extent can this be asserted % Mr. Hang, who made it 
a point to examine this question, thinks that dualism is cer- 
tainly expressed in the 'philosophy of Zarathustra, as distinct 
from his religious teaching. But he openly refuses to believe 
that in primitive Mazdeism, Ahura-Mazda, or Ormuzd, had a 
rival in power. " An evil spirit," he says, " distinct from 
Ahura-Mazda, possessing the same power, and in direct and 
perpetual opposition to Him, is a thing completely foreign to 
Zoroaster's theology ; although such an opinion among his fol- 
lowers may very well be found, by implication at least, in the 
later books, such as the Vendidat." Mr. Haug, however, ad- 
mits that in the old Yacna — which, as we saw, comprise the 
Gathas, where the authentic Mazdean doctrine is contained — - 
is found the positive teaching (very different from the previous 
one), " that there are two principles, the Good and the Evil 
spirit, the first the only author of Gay a, entity, namely, all that 
is good ; the other the only author of Ajyditi, non-entity, 
namely, all that is bad ; both act in the universe ; both were 
together in the origin of things, subsisting," Mr. Iiaug says, 
" in the divine substance as they do now in mortal beings, and 
called the ' Twins.' " 

On account of this discovery, confirmed by Mr. Spiegel, 
and of some other texts which seem analogous, the mass of 
orientalists in our days admit a kind of real dualism in primi- 
tive Mazdeism, but a very different one from that of the Zar- 
vanians, as Mr. F. Lenormant calls them. This latter doctrine 
of dualism was " promulgated about the time of Alexander, 
and developed only during our middle ages, chiefly after the 
Moslem conquest of Persia ; and is still held by the Guebres 
and the Parsees of Bombay. According to it, one great Being 



190 



GENTILISM. 



existed before Orarazd and Ahriman, superior to tliem, the 
source of all, called Zarvanakamna (time without limits) ; 
from whom had emanated the two principles, and into whom 
they are one day to be absorbed, together with all the beings 
Avho peopled the world " (" Ancient History of the East," 
Tom. ii.). This is pure pantheism, which can nowhere be 
found in the works of Zarathustra. 

But is it true that real dualism, as contained in the passage 
quoted above from Mr. Hang, and interpreted by him, is surely 
to be accepted as pure, primitive Mazdeism ? This would 
not certainly be surprising, as nobody concedes infallibility to 
Zoroaster, who never pretended to it himself, always announced 
himself as a single mortal, and was never called a god or even 
a semi-god by any of his followers in after ages. And this is 
certainly remarkable. A man of his moral and intellectual 
height, living in the remote antiquity all must now concede to 
him, would certainly, in any other nation out of Judaism, have 
been placed among the gods ; to be worshipped, with temples 
and altars. lie is the only hero of such high antiquity who 
has not enjoyed the privilege of godship, which he would him- 
self have repudiated with horror. And, in this respect, he is 
on a par with the great men of the Bible who honored God, 
transmitted faithfully Tlis worship to their descendants, fought 
for Ilim if needed, and were true heroes and sages, to whom 
no one ever thought of granting divine honors. Are we obliged 
to believe that he — Zoroaster — taught real dualism, the exist- 
ence of two distinct, opposite principles, one good, the other 
bad ; both equal ? We have still great doubts upon this point, 
after having read what has been published lately by men whom 
we honor, and to whom religion is really indebted for their 
discoveries. 

First, in the midst of that metaphysical obscurity which cer- 
tainly surrounds the doctrine of Zarathustra on the origin of 
evil, we read in a passage of Mr. Spiegel, translated in French, 



CENTEAL ASIA AND AFEICA. 



191 



the following phrase, taken from the thirtieth chapter of the 
fourth Gatha : " Both these Celestial beings, the Twins, showed 
originally in their own persons, the Good and the Evil, in 
thoughts, words, and acts. . . . They both united together to 
create first life and transitory things, and regulate the future 
formation of the world. ... Of these two Celestial beings, the 
Evil spirit chose evil, and the Most Holy who created the 
solid heaven, purity." 

This is not certainly orthodox Christian teaching. We must, 
however, remark, that this very text supposes the belief in real 
creation, not by emanation. And this was undoubtedly a dogma 
of Mazdeism ; and here the text speaks of an epoch previous 
to this creation. How difficult was it for Zoroaster to interpret 
correctly the original tradition on the subject 1 But when he 
says that the " Twins" showed " originally" the Good and the 
Bad in their- thoughts, etc., we may suppose that the Bactrian 
Sage made a slight mistake in interpreting the true tradition 
contained in his own mind, and wished only to say, that the 
being who was destined to be the Bad Principle, by his own 
choice, " showed it by his thoughts, words, and actions." "We 
should have an orthodox enough description of Lucifer. For 
the angels, for aught we know, may have been created long 
ages before man, and Lucifer may very well have been the first 
created among the angels, as he was the highest. He must 
have been, therefore, with God in heaven, during long ages, 
and united with Him, perhaps, in the creation of the world as 
His minister ; only he was not Evil yet, but merely destined 
to be one day by his own choice, as Zoroaster has it. A very 
slight change, therefore, would make the text correct in doctrine. 

This would be plain, perhaps, if so many books of the same 

author had not been lost. That some explanation of the kind 

is needed, appears from the following : Ahriman, in the Zends, 

is not only opposed to Ahura-Mazda, but likewise to Mithra. 

And, as everything goes by pairs in Mazdeism, he cannot be 
U 



192 



GENTILISM. 



called superior to Mithra, to whom lie is opposed, and who 
drives him away from heaven, under the form of a serpent. 
Consequently he cannot be called equal to Ahura-Mazda or 
Ormuzd, to whom Mithra is subordinate. 

There is evidently some confusion in the text which cannot 
be cleared up on account of the loss of the greatest part of Maz- 
dean books. But the personage of Mithra, his fight with, and 
his victory over, Anriman, prove conclusively to our own mind 
that there is no real dualism between Ormuzd and Ahriman, in 
the primitive religion of Zarathustra. This question, however, 
merits a somewhat more detailed investigation. 

Who is Mithra in the theology of Zoroaster? 

F. Lenormant and E. Chevallier, both great orientalists, the 
first pre-eminently, tell us (Anc. History of the East, T. 2, 
p. 33), that " Mithra was the Mediator, whose origin is not 
clearly explained in what remains of the Zoroasti'ian books; but 
who seems to have sprung from Ormuzd, and to have been con- 
substantial with him. Mithra had driven Ahriman — who is rep- 
resented as a serpent with two legs — from heaven. Mithra was 
the guardian of men during life, and their judge after death. 
His functions are especially enlarged on in the later books ; but 
his name, his title, " victorious," and his high position in the 
Mazdean faith, unquestionably belong to the most ancient 
phase of this veligion. And as everything was arranged in 
hostile pairs, Mithra had his double and adversary in the crea- 
tion of Ahriman (Mithra Daradj), " the evil Mithra," who 
labored to destroy all his beneficent work. Is not this merely 
the fight of Michael with Lucifer ? Only Michael is not placed 
60 high in the Old Testament. 

Ahriman, according to this, was the adversary of Mithra, who 
conquered him and drove him from heaven. He could not be, 
consequently, equal in power to Ahura-Mazda, from whom 
Mithra sprung. Zarathustra, whose expressions are nearly 
always exact, certainly much more so than the often vague for- 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFEICA. 193 

mulas of the Yedie books, could not fall into so egregious a con- 
tradiction as this would suppose. The real obscurity of the case 
must come from the loss of the other Mazdean books; and to 
confirm this opinion, we have all the titles given to the Living 
Creator of the Universe (Ahura-Mazda), and noted previously. 
Such an all-perfect Being cannot brook an equal. Hence, in 
all the cuneiform inscriptions preserved yet in Asia, even those 
of the Persian kings of the Achcemenidse dynasty, the only God 
recorded on the monuments is Ahura-Mazda, his supposed ad- 
versary never being mentioned. 

Another argument, not without force, is derived from the 
general attribiition given to the two principles in the text from 
which the difficulty arose. One is the cause, the author of 
entity, namely : of all that is good ; the other is the cause, the 
author of non-entity, namely : of all that is evil. Grod is, and 
can only be, the cause of what is good, never of evil ; all Chris- 
tian theologians and philosophers agree in this — Calvin would 
have been the only exception, had he been a Christian. Zara- 
thustra, consequently, in this shows himself to have been a 
most profound thinker, if he did not derive it from primitive 
tradition. 

That the devil is the great cause of evil, and that evil is non- 
entity, is likewise the doctrine of some of the greatest Christian 
philosophers, among whom are St. Augustine and St. Thomas. 
Zarathustra, consequently, is right again in this doctrine. The 
only error consists in making both " Twins," which evidently 
must not be understood literally as enjoying equal power, since 
Ahriman was once conquered by Mithra inferior to Ormuzd. 
Every sound reasoning, therefore, goes to exclude real dualism 
from primitive Mazdeism. 

There is no need of recalling to the mind of the reader the 
numerous inferior beings whose existence is proclaimed by this 
religion, either on the side of the good, or on that of the bad 
principle. Among the first were included the Amshaspands, 



194 



GENTILISM. 



the Yzecls, and the Fervers ; among the second, the Darvands, 
the Divas, etc. This was merely the doctrine of the existence 
of angels and demons. 

This discussion, therefore, instead of weakening the impres- 
sion that the religion of Zoroaster was monotheistic, has indeed 
added new proofs to what has been the universal belief of all 
learned men in ancient as well as in modern times. Bergier is 
the only one perhaps who in his " Dietionnaire Tbeologique," 
declares himself openly an antagonist of the prevailing opinion. 
But all the ancients were unanimous in asserting that the doc- 
trine of the Bactrian Sage — they thought him Persian — was 
opposed to the multiplicity of gods. In modern times the 
more fully the question has been investigated, the clearer 'has 
it appeared that their appreciation of his doctrine was correct. 
Eugene Burnouf proclaimed it, it seems, openly; and he had a 
right to speak on the subject. The new texts, translated by 
Mr. Hang and Mi-. Spiegel, appeared at first to throw some 
doubt upon it, but Mr. Hang admits unequivocally pure 
monotheism in the religious part of the Zends. And, if Mr. 
Spiegel inclines to the other side, his supposition gives rise 
to immense difficulties. We can say, certainly, that the new 
discoveries have brought to light the most unexpected results, 
and raised at once the religion of Zoroaster far above all 
the other natural religions of the East. It is now admitted 
by all, except a few, that dualism is an after-growth in the 
religious, if not in the philosophical, system of the Zends. Its 
restorer speaks constantly of one God, and not two. He in- 
veighs vehemently against the multiplicity of gods ; and wishes 
his people to adore but one. Even much later, when Media 
and Persia received his religion through the tribe of the Ma- 
gians, real dualism, or the co-existence of two equal and supre?ne 
principles, the good and the evil, was completely unknown. 
All the cuneiform inscriptions found at Persepolis and else- 
where, which commemorate some great events under the Per- 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 195 

sian kings of the Achsenienidae family or clan, speak only of one 
God, Oimuzd, sole object of the worship of the nation. It is 
in the philosophical, not in the religious, part of the Zends, that 
the evil principle is spoken of, as a great fact appearing every- 
where, and everywhere interfering with the harmony of the 
divine plan. It is just thus that a Christian speaks. But Zoro- 
aster, it seems, had gone farther still^hi Christian philosophy, 
if we may employ such phraseology. God, according to him, 
can be only the cause of what is good. He cannot be the cause 
of evil. Consequently true evil, chiefly moral evil, ought to 
be detested absolutely as coming from a cause distinct from,, 
and consequently opposed to, God. But how is the cause of 
evil opposed to God ? Here, truly, we admire the noble dis- 
coveries made by modern learned men ; and we would wish to 
be able to ascertain them of our own knowledge, by diving, 
as they do, into the great languages of primitive man. 

They tell us that the cause of what is good is entity j the 
cause of evil, non-entity. Thus, at least, they make Zoroaster 
speak. And what is this but the language of St. Augustine 
and St. Thomas? All that exists in reality is being; entity 
comes from God. All moral evil, sin, imperfection even, arises 
from some deficiency, and in that respect is a non-entity. God 
cannot be its cause. Zoroaster, therefore, only asserts that God 
exists, although there are moral evils of which He is not the 
cause. In this he controverts all future atheists, whose great 
argument is precisely the reverse, namely : that God is not, 
because evil is. The sage friend of Gustasp answers them : * 
evil in existing beings, as far as it is evil, is non-entity. There- 
fore God exists in spite of it. 

We have, it is true, placed in strict order the thoughts spread 
less regularly in the translation of the Zend-Avesta ; but from 
the whole context, we think that this was at the bottom of the 
mind of the author. 



196 



GENTILISM. 



III. 

It is not surprising that such a pure doctrine should become, 
in course of time, less understood, and, indeed, distorted by 
commentaries. It is only what we should expect from human 
infirmity. That Zoroaster, when speaking of the " enemy," 
the " adversary " had in his mind the great cause of all evils, 
the Devil himself, we firmly believe ; and if so, he was right. 
But this was not the dogma of Ahriman as subsequently de- 
veloped. In the original text of the Zends, Ahriman was not 
" without the reach of Ormuzd " — this is textually taken from 
the Zend-Avesta. Ormuzd alone, therefore, was truly God. 
His enemy succumbed to Mithra, inferior to Ormuzd, but his 
mil lister and he — Ahriman — was driven from heaven. In 
course of time, however, both became independent of and hos- 
tile to each other, each ruling over a realm of his own. Then 
Parsees began, really, to believe in two gods — a belief which 
was thus a corruption of the ancient doctrine. The exact time 
when this took place cannot be ascertained. It was under the 
Persian dynasty, yet not at its beginning ; at which time the 
Magians were not dualists. Mauicheism came much later ; and 
Manicheism did not belong to Zoroastei-'s doctrine in any manner. 
It was rather a kind of gnostic heresy, since, according to Manes, 
the good Principle, Primeval Light, had given birth to twelve 
seons, corresponding to the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and the 
twelve stages of the world ; and Darkness, the Bad, or Archon, 
had peopled his kingdom with demons fighting each other ; 
not knowing even the existence of Light until, in their con- 
tests, coming to the outer edge of their region, they became 
aware of it, and made captive one of the superior aBons, Christ. 
X early all we know of Manicheism is from St. Augustine ; 
and from his writings no parallelism can be established be- 
tween it and Zoroaster's system. The most corrupt Ahrimanic 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFEICA. 



197 



doctrine of the modern Parsees or Guebres is far superior to 
what Manes ever taught. Modern critics, therefore, have re- 
moved by their philological discoveries, all the doubts and un- 
certainties which formerly obscured the real belief of the primi- 
tive Magians. The doctrine was pure at first. In course of 
time it was altered, and dualism replaced monotheism. Thus 
several texts of Plutarch (De Iside et Osiride) are reconciled ; 
and the conclusions drawn by Thomas Hyde, Peter Bayle, and 
other critics of the seventeenth century, are proved to have 
been mistakes ; whilst the truths elicited by Cudworth, and 
Mosheim, his annotator, are confirmed ; this time, however, 
supported by irrefragable documents, which render the conclu- 
sion final. Mithra, likewise, comes thus into the system. 

We need not enter into other peculiarities of Zoroastrianism. 
Our whole object has been to ascertain if monotheism was con- 
tained in it, and we think we have placed that beyond dispute. 
A word or two, however, may be said on some other dogmas 
of that primitive faith. That the certainty of a judgment 
after life, of places of reward or punishment — Heaven and 
Hell — formed a portion of its creed, cannot be a matter of 
doubt. But even the doctrine of the resurrection of the body 
is clearly contained in the most authentic part of the Zend- 
Avesta ; and the solid argument used by Christians to prove its 
possibility — the almightiness of the Creator — is likewise referred 
to in the work of Zoroaster. Finally, there is that august per- 
sonage, apart from all superior beings under God, " who stands 
between God and man ; shows the way to heaven, and pro- 
nounces judgment upon human actions after death ; guards 
with his drawn sword the whole world against the demons ; 
has his own light from inside, and from outside is decorated 
with stars," who is, apparently, more powerful than the great 
archangel Michael in Scripture, and inferior only to our Lord 
Jesus Christ. Nothing certainly more holy and more pure has 
ever issued from an uninspired pen, nor been bequeathed to 



108 



GENTILISM. 



the teachings of reason and the transmission of tradition. We 
allude to the great personality of Mithra, as he is described in 
the Zends, not in his infamous travesty, in later times, in heathen 
Rome. 

It was against the believers in such exalted doctrines that 
the brutal sword of Omar was drawn from the scabbard, never 
to return to it until they Avere well-nigh extirpated. A few 
thousand Guebres still surviving in Persia, and a few more 
thousand Parsees settled in the neighborhood of Bombay in 
India, are all that remain of the followers of Zoroaster. The 
Moslems, with their boasted mission of destroying idolatry, 
waged a more implacable warfare against the purest monothe- 
ists of the East, as well as against the Christians of the West, 
than ever the} 7 did against the fetichists of Africa, or the wor- 
shippers of Siva in Ilindostan. 

The fact is, the great danger in our days, in speaking of the 
religious system of the Zends, is to appear to favor the opinion 
of those modern writers who pretend that Judaism, or even 
Christianity, found there the substance of the belief elaborated 
in the Old and New Testaments. But Origen had already, six- 
teen hundred years ago, guarded us against this error by assert- 
ing (Contra Celsum, vi.) " that Christianity has received noth- 
ing from them ;" and it is a fact easily ascertained by history. 

In speaking of the doctrinal corruptions which time and the 
weakness of the human mind introduced into Mazdeism, we do 
not find the gradual and well - ascertained decline which we 
described in Hindooism. Zarathustra had spoken so openly 
against the multiplicity of gods, and his ritual was so clear and 
precise in the same direction, that his followers could not go 
totally astray as long as they read and revered his books. 
Yet, we have just seen how real dualism was introduced. 
And something; has been said of the form it took when the 
fatal error of Zarvanakanara crept in. We refer to a para- 
graph a few pages back. " This monstrous conception " — 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



199 



remark with justice F. Lenormant and E. Chevallier in tlieir 
History of the East — " which converted Mazdeism into abso- 
lute pantheism, substituted emanation for creation, and reduced 
Ornruzd from the position assigned him by Zoroaster, as the 
Great Creator of all, to that of a mere demiurgos — the organ- 
izer of a pre-existent universe ; which assimilates the self-exist- 
ing Being, the Deity, with uncreated matter, with a chaos sup- 
posed to be eternal ; wbich destroys all distinction in the moral 
government of the world between good and evil, making them 
both to bave emanated from, and to be destined to be again 
absorbed into, the same divine being .... this monstrous con- 
ception is absolutely contrary to the very spirit of tbe reform 
of Zoroaster." 

Yet it seems that it is, and has been, the belief of the Parsees 
for many ages. Mr. Spiegel, Mr. Oppert, and the Baron d'Eck- 
stein have shown that this " Zarvanian doctrine " resulted from 
the infiltration of the gross and materialistic pantheism of Chal- 
dcea into Mazdeism. This religion, therefore, in course of time, 
took the first downward step in error — Pantheism — as described 
in the Book of Wisdom ; but never reached the second, pure 
idolatry. Even during the dynasty of the AchcemenidcB, when 
bloody, nay, human sacrifices — a thing so abhorrent to primi- 
tive Mazdeism — made a part of the Persian religion, not only 
did not the worship of idols prevail, as in other countries 
at the time, as in Hindostan certainly ; not only no great works 
of art were ever raised to polytheism as in Hindostan, Egypt, 
and Greece ; not only poetry did not rival art for its illustra- 
tion, as in all those regions ; but invariably in their warlike 
expeditions the Persians showed their hatred of idolatry by 
destroying its emblems and its temples in Asia Minor, Egypt, 
and Greece. 

" Fire worship " was another deterioration of the primitive 
doctrine, of which a word must be said. It became a real 
"worship of fire" as an element. Nor is there in that any- 



200 



GENTILISM. 



thing' to surprise us, inasmuch as fire must always be an im- 
portant object in any pantheistic creed. But was it so in 
Mazdeism at first ? Some modern philologists think so, and 
accuse Zoroaster of not having had the courage to destroy this 
superstition which he found in the country of Grustasp. This 
pusillanimity is scarcely intelligible in the Bactrian Sage, 
whom we heard, at the very commencement of his reform, 
declaring openly against the "fire worship" of the "ahura" 
priesthood of his own country, as well as against the " devas " 
of the " enemy." If he kept the symbol in his ritual, it must 
have been only as an emblem. Hence F. Lenormant and E. 
Chevallier state openly : " The only representation of Ormuzd 
admitted within the sanctuaries by the Zend-Avesta, and per- 
mitted in worship, was fire, because this was considered as per- 
fectly pure and almost immaterial. From this arose the adora- 
tion of the sacred fire, though the Mazdeans did not adore the 
fire itself, but considered it merely a representative of Or- 
muzd." 

In conclusion, it is almost needless to add that the morality 
of the Zends is irreproachable. Its ethical code is the only 
ancient one — the Jewish Decalogue being always withdrawn 
from comparison, which taught openly that purity of morals 
ought not to reach only human actions, but to embrace likewise 
words and thoughts. The phrase is repeated to -satiety in the 
Zends, so as to become a general formula, which necessarily 
recalls to a Christian the order he has to follow in the examen 
of his own conscience. 

"With pure morality, a great simplicity of life is everywhere 
recommended in Mazdeism, as it was in primitive Hindooism. 
Three orders of men in society are mentioned — the priest, the 
warrior, and the agriculturist — never, however, degenerating 
into castes. To encourage agriculture ought to be the chief 
object of a good king ; and Yistacpa, Gusta-sp, is represented 
as a pattern in that regard. Under his sway, each Mazdean 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



201 



" built to himself an habitation on the earth, in which he 
maintained fire, cattle, his wife, his children, and flocks and 
herds." This is again the picture of patriarchal life we have 
already admired in Hindostan. In Bactria, besides, the Maz- 
dean had to protect himself against the nomads of the north ; 
and he could not do it better than by adopting a sedentary 
life, and devoting himself to agricultural pursuits. Another 
convincing example is thus furnished of primeval " civil- 
ization," so different from ours, yet so superior to it, if we 
take an account of the spiritual and moral aspect of our 
humanity. 

The greatest enemies the Mazdeans had ever to fear, accord- 
ing to the Zends, were the nomads in the north, and the wor- 
shippers of the "devas" in the south. No mention is ever 
made of savages and barbarians ; so that the common theory 
of our days does not seem to hold good for Central Asia in the 
oldest times. There were, certainly, Turanian races all around 
the faithful subjects of King Yistagpa ; but they were not 
materially different from the Tartar nomads of our day. Of 
the " primitive man," as described by Sir John Lubbock, E. B. 
Tylor, etc., not a single representative appears to be present. 
Had they all been already buried, and were their remains to 
be found only in the tertiary strata of the epoch % A geologist 
alone could answer. But we must ask permission to believe 
that " savagery " had not yet begun for Central Asia. The 
Russians even scarcely found it in their expedition of last year 
against Khiva, the very centre of the kingdom of ancient 
Gustasp ; although, undoubtedly, the people they met with and 
described have prodigiously degenerated from the contempo- 
raries of Yistagpa and Zarathustra. Shall we ever find the 
theory of progress proved in history, except as a consequence 
of the doctrines of Christianity ? 



202 



GENTILISM. 



SECTION II. AFRICA. 

In the preceding pages, we hope that we have established 
tolerably conclusively the fact, that monotheism was the primitive 
religion of the whole of Asia ; or, at least, spread itself over its 
whole surface from the central part of the continent, where it 
surely existed before any other known religion. The only parts of 
it which have not come directly under consideration, are at the 
west, Arabia, Syria, and Scythia ; but as Ilamitism, or the Allo- 
phylian races, invaded all those countries, little can be said 
of them. We will waive all mention of them at present. As . 
to the Far-East : China, Thibet, Farther-India, Japan, and other 
large islands, Buddhism overran them with error, by a process 
we have already described, and into which Hindooism entered 
largely. Of the religion of those countries previously to Buddh- 
ism, nothing is known, except a very slight account with respect 
to China, which we may in due time adduce as not unfavorable 
to our views. In a future chapter more shall be said on these 
various points. 

The field, therefore, which now offers itself to our investiga- 
tion is the large continent of Africa; and as the direction of 
immigration taken by its primitive population was from the 
basin of the Red Sea, and through the far-reaching channel of 
the jJsile toward the interior of the country, Egypt must be 
the first and chief object of our attention. The negroes of the 
centre, the Kafirs of the south, the barbarian tribes of Guinea, 
will reveal to us their real ancestors in Egypt and Ethiopia ; 
and we shall be able to decide whether or not they ought to 
be placed in juxtaposition with the gorillas and the apes of 
the same country. 

EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA. 
I. 

All ethnographers now admit that Egypt received its first 
inhabitants from Asia, the cradle of mankind. But the ernes- 



CENTRAL ASIA AJ5TD AFRICA. 



203 



tion is, To what race did they belong 1 Sir George Rawlinson, 
in his "Herodotus" (Tom. 2d, Appen. to Book 2d, Chap. 1), 
says bluntly : " The inhabitants of the valley of the Nile 
derived their origin from Asia. . . . Their skull shows them to 
have been of the Caucasian stock, and distinct from the 
African tribes westward of the Nile ; and they are evidently 
related to the oldest races of Central Asia." 

Yet, everywhere, the same author, to his great credit, bends 
to the authority of the Bible, and rejects any system which 
openly contradicts it. The book of Genesis is plain in its 
language : Egypt was the land of Mesraim, and Mesraim was 
the son of Ham. Can the posterity of Ham be said to belong 
to the Caucasian stock ? Indeed, universal opinion ascribes 
the old Egyptians to the Hamite races ; and their language 
was certainly Turanian in its general character. There are, 
however, difficulties on the subject which it does not come 
within our plan to smooth over. It is believed by many 
that they were " an offset from the early undivided Asiatic 
stock," and that their language was not altogether " Turanian," 
but " partook also of the peculiarities of the Semitic and San- 
scritic." Dr. Prichard, in his " Natural History of Man," 
thinks they were of a mixed origin. 

This indistinctness both in their ethnic and grammatical 
characteristics, is only what we should have expected from the 
circumstance of their being the most ancient civilized people 
on earth. They must, like the Celts, have left Central Asia 
before the Aiyan and Semitic character was fully formed ; and 
on this account there was in them something of the primitive 
unity. The reflections of Sir George Bawlinson, and of 
several other modern Egyptologists, lead to this strange con- 
clusion, which certainly lends an additional interest to the 
study of this ancient people. 

There is another curious and suggestive peculiarity of the 
Egyptians, namely, their civilization from the very first. The 



204 



GENTILISM. 



Hindoos, certainly, and the Bactrians, enjoyed from the earliest 
times a civilization of their own. Yet it was a very different one, 
as we saw, from that which is understood by the word in our 
modern ages. But " it is a phenomenon worthy of the most 
serious attention," says Champollion-Figeac, (Egypte ancienne, 
Paris, 1839), " to see Egypt already, at such remote period, in 
possession of all civil, religious, and military institutions indis- 
pensable to the prosperity of a great people, and of all the 
gratifications that science and arts can add to the advantages of 
civil and religious laws." And more emphatically still, 
Mariette Bey says in his "Appcrcu de l'histoire d'Egypte," that 
" at the very origin of time we see Egyptian civilization 
already complete, and future ages, however numerous and 
long, can scarcely teach it anything more." 

The authors who hold such a language do not pretend, 
certainly, that something of the apparent progress we have 
already pointed out in Ilindostan, and which took place even 
more obviously in Greece, did not take place in Egypt ; since 
all are agreed that the eighteenth dynasty, and the reign of 
Harnesses II. was the apogee of Egyptian art and refinement. 
But they mean there was no visible childhood for this nation ; 
which emerges in histoiy with all the appliances of arts ; so 
that E. Kenan himself is obliged to admit (Antiquites et fouilles 
d'Egypte, Revue des deux Mondes, 1865), that " this country 
cannot be said to start from a mythic, heroic, and barbarous 
beginning." 

It is, therefore, for us an especially important subject for 
investigation, on account of the flat contradiction it gives to 
the theory which supposes man to have been at first a barba- 
rian. "Whilst, at the same time, it establishes conclusively that 
man is not so ancient as modem theories pretend ; for Bunseu 
himself assigns to the origin of the monarchy of the Pharaohs 
— in Egyptian, Pir aa — the date of 4215 before Christ. And 
although, generally, the first Manetho dynasty is believed to have 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



205 



begun eight hundred years earlier — toward 5004 — Mr. Marietta 
says, with a pleasing diffidence in his " Notice des Monuments, 
etc., Alexandrie, 1864 :" " The Egyptian chronology offers 
difficulties which have not yet been conquered .... For all 
dates anterior t;o .Psammeticus First (665 before Christ), it is 
impossible to assign more than approximations, which become 
uncertain the more we go "up the stream of ages .... Doubt 
increases as we recede back from the time of our era, so that 
according to the various attempted systems, there may be a dif- 
ference of two thousand years in the way of establishing the 
foundation of the Egyptian monarchy." 

Modern opposers of Christianity, therefore, have ceased to 
object the millions of years, and the interminable dynasties of 
the gods contained in the Egyptian mythology. They have 
changed altogether their tactics ; and, setting aside the teach- 
ings of history as lately developed, they fall back on the long- 
forgotten cosmogonies of the Greeks. And, in order to explain 
the creation of the world without the intervention of God, they 
present to our astonished gaze the infinite duration of a process 
which must begin by nothing (their celebrated protoplasm), to 
end with all the wonders we now admire. 

Egypt, therefore, was one of the first countries settled by 
man ; and if we can know what divinity Egypt first worship- 
ped, a great step will have been made in our progress toward 
the truth we are investigating. But an immense difficulty 
meets us at the very outset. We are surrounded with myste- 
ries, and we have no certain records to solve them. For Egypt 
is, in truth, the land of mystery. Sphinxes of hard granite, 
sculptured and polished with a wondrous art, arrayed in long 
lines before the porticoes of the temples, seem yet in our days 
to mock the traveller, and dare him to raise the veil of Isis. 
The country as it was formerly is really a puzzle : so grand 
in her monuments, and so vulgar in her manners ; so civilized 
and so wretched ; full of noble temples and of dark sepulchres ; 



206 



GENTILISM. 



with palaces for the great and wretched huts for the masses of 
the people ; a paradise four months of the year, a desert of 
mud or of dust for the remainder. Celsus could with justice 
say to the Egyptian Origen, who, for once, did not contradict 
him : " In the places of worship of the Egyptians, as you ap- 
proach them, are to he seen splendid enclosures, and groves, 
and large and beautiful gateways, and wonderful temples, and 
magnificent tents around them, and ceremonies of worship, 
full of superstition and mystery; hut when you have entered 
and passed within, the object of adoration is seen to be a cat, 
or an ape, or a crocodile, or a goat, or a dog !" 



II. 



It is chiefly religion that is in Egypt hard to understand. 
After all the researches of previous centuries, and of our own 
age, whose discoveries surpass those of all the others put to- 
gether, there are still nearly as many opinions on the subject as 
there are investigators. Can we pretend to solve the problem? 
If the mystery had not been already cleared up as far as re- 
ir;irds lliiwlostan. we might well despair. However, orientalists 
and learned travellers have of late years brought to light a 
certain amount of information as to the dark past of Egypt. 
And this, taken in connection with the full and instructive In- 
dian discoveries, may yet help us to do something towards 
solving a problem which, at the first blush, seemed to be 
closed against us. And this the more, as, of late, inscriptions 
have been deciphered which will materially contribute towards 
such a result. The books which, no doubt, previously existed 
have been lost, probably for ever. We have not the Yedas 
and the Zends of Egypt ; and thus we appear to grope in the 
dark. For the full knowledge of the hieroglyphs, if they 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



207 



could all be read even, would not, probably, be sufficient to 
offer a complete solution of our difficulty. 

That there were books written in Egypt in the most primitive 
times, cannot be denied. The, proof of it exists in too many 
passages of ancient authors. There were even, in that strange 
country, simultaneously, several different alphabets and distinct 
kinds of writing. St. Clement of Alexandria, who is an au- 
thority, since they existed yet in his time, tells us, that " those 
instructed among the Egyptians learned first of all that style of 
the Egyptian letters which is called epistolographic (we call 
it now demotic) ; and, secondly, the hieratic, which the sacred 
scribes practise ; and finally and last of all, the hieroglyphic, of 
which one kind is by the first elements literal (kyriologic), and 
the other symbolic. Of the symbolic, one kind speaks literally 
by imitation, and another writes as it were figuratively ; and an- 
other is quite allegorical, using certain' enigmas." (Stromata, 
Lib. v., Cap. 4). It appears from this passage, that the Egyp- 
tian language had forms enough to satisfy all tastes ; and 
we do not think that any other country, even India, enjoyed 
such a superabundance of literary elements. Modern Egyptol- 
ogists are familiar with ancient documents written in demotic 
letters and style ; and owing to the recent discoveries of 
Young, Champollion, Rosellini, and others, the hieroglyphs, 
either literal (kyriologic) — we call them phonetic — or symbolic, 
of the two kinds mentioned by St. Clement, begin to be known 
to us, and to unveil many events of the past hitherto concealed 
or in doubt. But, unfortunately, the books written in the hie- 
ratic style, which were chiefly those answering to the Vedas of 
Hindostan, are now lost, or if a few pages of them are now 
occasionally found, as some pretend, these are but insignificant 
fragments. 

A word on each of those subjects will render the matter 
clear. Nothing was written in Egypt in the epistolographic, 
or as we say, demotic style, but civil and domestic documents, 



208 GENTILISM. 

of which a great number now exist and can be deciphered. 
Hence, we know how the Egyptians kept their accounts, 
wrote to their friends, corresponded for the sake of trade, 
barter, information, sold or bought their houses and fields, etc., 
etc. But iu vain should we look in those documents for any- 
thing concerning their religion, unless in a fragmentary shape, 
and by mere allusions, which give us the religious thoughts of 
the people by implication. According to Sir George Bawlin- 
son (Herodotus, Tom. ii., Appendix to Book ii., Chap. 5) : " The 
demotic character replaced the hieratic," which -consequently 
fell into disuse. He asserts, likewise, that " it was used in his- 
torical papyri," and consequently did not serve only for domes- 
tic purposes. It seems that many important discoveries have 
been made lately in this kind of writing. Yet it is not known 
when the demotic came into use, although " it was as early as 
the reign of Psamineticus II., of the twenty-sixth dynasty." 
But this is not an early epoch for us, and cannot give us the 
primitive Egyptian religion. 

People, in general, know well how, a few years ago, the key 
of the hieroglyphs was at last found; and this discovery pro- 
duced the greatest sensation throughout the learned world. It 
was thought that, at last, we should know the religion of the 
Egyptians. For was it not on the public monuments, on the 
obelisks, and colossal statues of the gods, that the sphinx 
spoke ? It turned out, however, that all those mysterious char- 
acters composed merely inscriptions in the "lapidary style," 
as a Boman would say, stating that such a monument, obelisk, 
statue, had been raised by such a king, who was of course de- 
voted to the worship of Amun, Osiris, Ba, Bhtah, etc., etc. 
It was a complete disappointment. Yet people might have 
expected it, had they reflected on passages in well-known 
authors, from which it appears that the hieroglyphs were per- 
fectly understood, and could be read easily long ago. For the 
Ptolemies and the Caesars had erected monuments, with the same 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



209 



kind of inscriptions, all over Egypt. Such stale affairs could 
not, consequently, make us acquainted with the primitive wor- 
ship, and the mysterious knowledge of this strange people.* 

How could any serious and deep information he satisfactorily 
conveyed by writings in which it seems there cannot be gram- 
mar nor orthography ; since, on the same monuments, some of 
the characters are truly phonetic, others are strictly and liter- 
ally figurative, and others finally enigmatical and allegori- 
cal ? And that has actually been found out by Champollion 
and others, which was stated by St. Clement of Alexandria, in 
the passage quoted above, more than fifteen hundred years ago. 

The phonetic or kyriologic signs, as St. Clement says, in a 
subsequent part of the passage referred to, are invariably 
composed of the first letters of well-known words. Thus, to 
speak in our modern language, an I might be represented by a 
lion, a lyre, a log, a locust, or by whatever you please, begin- 
ning by the same first letter. The literally figurative signs, or 
imitative, as St. Clement calls them, were plain and strict figures 
representing any object whatsoever ; thus the sun could be rep- 
resented by a circle, its exterior figure ; and the moon could be 
denoted by a crescent, its supposed image, etc. But worst of 
all, the enigmatical and allegorical signs might be anything 
which in the fancy of an Egyptian artist could be called, an 
enigma or an allegory of the object intended to be represented. 

* The men of the times anterior to our own, well acquainted with class- 
ical authors, had likewise the translation of two long inscriptions, taken 
from well-known obelisks, which might have taught them not to expect 
too much from those sources of information. There was first the one 
mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus, in his Book xvii., 4, translated into 
Greek by Hermapion, from the obelisk of lieliopolis, placed by Caesar 
Augustus in the Circus Maximus, which runs thus : " Thus says Helios 
to King Ramesses : I have given to thee, with joy, to rule over the world ; 
whom Helios loves, and Apollo the powerful; .... the son of the gods, 
the ruler of the world .... King JRamesses, to whom all the earth is 
subject, by valor and boldness .... 

" Apollo the powerful, the true lord of the diadem ; Ramesses, of whom 



210 



GENTILISM. 



And all those various signs of thought were indiscriminately 
used in the hieroglyphic inscriptions. 

This hrief description contains the substance of the chief dis- 
coveries explained in the ponderous volumes of modern Egyp- 
tologists until the death of Champollion. The hieroglyphs 
w ere merely objects of art to adorn the monuments of the 
nation ; and the ideas they conveyed were known by the 
beholders almost conventionally. The learned men among 
them tacitly agreed that such an idea would be represented 
by such a sign, and that is nearly all. It is evident that the 
knowledge of the primitive religion of Egypt cannot be de- 
duced from such public documents. It ought, moreover, to be 
remarked, that the invention of hieroglyphs was probably later 
than the introduction of idolatry, as we shall have occasion to 
show ; and, thus, these inscriptions could only refer to the idola- 
trous religion of the people, not to their primitive worship, 
whatever that might have been. 

Lately, it is true, a more exact study seems to have brought 
the system of Egyptian hieroglyphs to something of the nature 
of a rude alphabet ; by finding out what are thought to be deter- 
'nu.iut.lu'>: letters of a phonetic kind, either preceding or some- 
times following the symbolic or enigmatical hieroglyph, impart- 
ing to forty-two characters — they say this is the last and most im- 
proved style — all the required meanings by the help of those 
determinatives, which might be thus called affixes or suffixes. 

Egypt boasts ; who has glorified the city of Hel.os ; who rules over the 
earth ; who honors the gods dwelling in the city of Helios ; whom Helios 
loves." 

Four more paragraphs follow of the same kind. 

The second example is found in the second book of the Annals of Taci- 
tus, who, speaking of the expedition of Germanicus to Egypt, says: 

" He visited the mighty antiquities of Thebes, where upon huge obe- 
lisks yet remained Egyptian characters, describing its former opulence. 
One of the senior priests was ordered to interpret them: He said they 
related, ' that Thebes once contained seven hundred thousand fighting 
men ; that with this army King Ramesses had conquered Lybia, Ethiopia, 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



211 



And it is said, that documents of this nature, chiefly on papy- 
rus — for occasionally hieroglyphs are found on papyrus — contain 
not only inscriptions, but ideas of any kind, even ritual prayers 
and hymns. But this seems to us very conjectural ; principally, 
for the reason that this kind of informal alphabet is said to 
have been constantly improving from the 4th dynasty to the 
26th ; and thus could never have had a permanent character ; so 
that nothing certain and positive can be gathered from it. We 
should, indeed, wonder that the old Egyptians, so traditional, so 
conservative, so much attached to their customs, should have 
been constantly revolutionizing their alphabet, and never satis- 
fied with the wisdom of their ancestors in so important a 
branch of their science and art. Moreover, the theory we are dis- 
cussing would suppose that the Egyptian dynasties have been 
well ascertained ; whereas, it is known that the best Egyptolo- 
gists differ on that essential point, and there is very little pros- 
pect of their ever agreeing on the subject. 

Tins discussion, however, is not essential for the object we 
have in view. For it is evident that, however improved and 
grammatical the Egyptian hieroglyphs may finally be found to 
have been, they could, at best, be of very little help for the 
question under consideration. Can we find in them the true 
primitive system of the Egyptian worship ? Undoubtedly not. 

The books which might, indeed, have helped us to solve the 
problem, were certainly those written in the hieratic style, as 

the Medes and Persians, the Bactrians and Scythians, and to his empire 
had added the territories of the Syrians, Armenians, and their neighbors, 
the Cappadocians .... Here, al-'o, was read the assessment of tribute, laid 
on several nations ; what weight of silver and gold ; what number of horses 
and arms .... were by each people paid; revenues equalling those ex- 
acted by the domination of the Parthians, or by the power of the Ro- 
mans.' " 

This last translation was evidently a free one, such as a Roman con- 
queror might understand. But in substance it was true, and shows that 
hieroglyphs were merely used for pompous state inscriptions. The same 
has Champollion found out by his discovery. 



212 



C! HVI'ILISM. 



St. Clement calls it, which, lie says, " the sacred scribes practise." 
And the description he gives of some of them, in another chap- 
ter of his " Stromata," shows that they were the very ones so 
celebrated under the name of Hermetic books, as he attributes 
them himself to Hermes. The whole passage is so important 
to our purpose that we must give it entire. And the object 
of the illustrious author, in this particular instance, being to 
show that the Greeks had derived " many of their philosophical 
and religious tenets from Egyptian and Hindoo sources," as he 
hud proved, in a previous very long chapter, that they had 
likewise " plagiarized from the Hebrews," lends to it a special 
interest and value in our present investigations. 

(Strom., Book vi., Chap, iv.) We quote from the recent 
Edinburgh edition of the Ante-Nicene Fathers : " The best 
of the (Greek) philosophers, having appropriated their most 
excellent dogmas from us — namely, from the Holy Scrip- 
tures — boast, as it were, of certain of the tenets which pertain 
to each (philosophical) sect (among them) being culled from 
other barbarians, chiefly from the Egyptians — both other 
tenets, and that especially of the transmigration of the soul. 
Fur the Egyptians pursue a philosophy of their own. This is 
principally shown by their sacred ceremonial. For first ad- 
vances the Singer, bearing some one of the symbols of music. 
For they say that he must learn two of the books of Hermes, 
the one of which contains the hymns of the gods, the second 
the regulations for the king's life. After the Singer, advances 
the Astrologer, with a horologe in his hand, and a palm, the 
symbol of astrology. He must have the astrological books of 
Hermes, which are four in number, always in his mouth. Of 
these, one is about the order of the fixed stars that are visible, 
and another about the conjunctions and luminous appearances 
of the sun and moon ; and the rest respecting their risings. 
Xext in order advances the Sacred Scribe, with wings on his 
head, and in his' hand a book and rale, in which were writing- 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



213 



ink and the reed with which they write. And he must be 
acquainted with what are called hieroglyphs, and know about 
cosmography and geography, the position of the sun and moon, 
and about the five planets ; also the description of Egypt, and 
the chart of the Nile ; and the description of the equipment 
of the priests and of the places consecrated to them, and about 
the measures and the things in use in the sacred rites. Then 
the Stole-keeper follows those previously mentioned, with the 
cubit of justice and the cup for libations. He is acquainted 
with all points called Paedeutic (relating to training) and 
Moschophatic (sacrificial). There are also ten books which 
relate to the honor paid by them to their gods, and containing 
the Egyptian worship — as that relating to sacrifices, first-fruits, 
hymns, prayers, processions, festivals, and the like. And be- 
hind all walks the Prophet, with the water-vase carried openly 
in his arms ; who is followed by those who carry the issue of 
loaves. He, as being the governor of the temple, learns the 
ten books called ' Hieratic ; ' and they contain all about the 
laws, and the gods, and the whole of the training of the priests. 
Eor the Prophet is, among the Egyptians, also over the distri- 
bution of the revenues. There are, then, forty-two books of 
Hermes indispensably necessary ; of which the six-and-thirty, 
containing the whole philosophy of the Egyptians, are learned 
by the forementioned personages ; and the other six, which are 
medical, by the Pastophori (image-bearers), treating of the 
structure of the body, and of diseases, and instruments, and 
medicines, and about the eyes, and the last about women. 
Such are the customs of the Egyptians, to speak briefly." 

From the very way of expressing himself, it is evident St. 
Clement meant to say that all this existed in his time, and he 
had probably witnessed the ceremony. 

From this very clear and interesting description, we may 
safely conclude that we have here evidently mention made of 
what we have already called the Vedas of Egypt. In these 



214 



GENTILISM. 



forty-two Hermetic books we find the whole science of the 
Egyptians, that science in which " Moses had been taught." 
In Hindostan, it is true, the Brahmins were to study constantly 
the Yedas, to know them by heart, and transmit orally their 
interpretation ; and the Yedas, as we have seen previously, con- 
tained all the science of the Hindoos, in a series of details 
exactly corresponding with those of the Hermetic books as de- 
■ scribed by St. Clement. But the recommendation addressed 
to the Brahmins in India was a general one. Each man was 
commanded to study and know by heart the whole large col- 
lection of the Hindoo scriptures. Here, on the contrary, 
priests invested with particular functions, had to commit to 
memory, and study thoroughly, some particular part of the 
Hermetic books. "We may suppose, it is true, that each one 
of the priests was to be likewise acquainted with the whole 
collection, and have a general knowledge of them ; but each 
particular minister of religion was to give his especial attention 
to a single branch of the whole ; and we see nowhere in Ilin- 
dostan such a distribution of mental labor recommended to 
specific classes of Brahmins. But keeping in view this distinc- 
tion, how well all else agrees amongst both people no one can 
deny. 

We shall have occasion to remark many other points of 
resemblance between the two races. This first one is suffi- 
ciently striking. 

But how did it happen that we have yet the Yedas and we 
cannot hope ever to find an authentic copy of the books of 
Hermes ? In India, the primitive religion, following the back- 
ward progress of which we spoke, was always, nevertheless, 
supposed to exist ; and the most corrupt generations of our 
days practising in the dark the abominable doctrines of the 
tantras, profess still as great a veneration for the Yedas as their 
ancestors of three thousand years ago. Mohammedanism never 
had any chance of converting Hindostan to its doctrines, and 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



215 



made a very slight impression on the country. Christianity 
itself has scarcely moved it yet. The missionaries of the true 
Church, led by the great Francis Xavier, were, indeed, begin- 
ning to turn the heart of the people towards the true " Brah- 
ma," when the Dutch first, and afterwards the English, thought 
they would serve God best by undoing what the successors of 
Xavier were zealously endeavoring to effect, and prevented the 
happy impulse given to truth in the sixteenth century, from 
becoming a universal movement toward the unification of the 
human race. The consequence was, the Hindoos are yet idola- 
ters ; but they, nevertheless, keep jealously their Yedas. 

In Egypt the case was altogether different. Mark was sent 
by Peter to Alexandria. A number of holy doctors, beginning 
by Pantoenus, founded the Alexandrian Christian school, and in 
spite of the persecutions of pagan emperors, Egypt in the 
fourth, or at least fifth, century, was altogether Christian. The 
idolatrous ceremonies, frequent yet in the time of Origen, as 
he often testifies, and still in full sway in the time of St. 
Clement of Alexandria, gradually fell into disuse, and at length 
disappeared altogether. The Hermetic books had no more any 
object. The Christian teachers must have discountenanced the 
indiscriminate reading of them. And, when the Saracens came 
with their hatred of everything not contained in the Koran, 
they, too, disappeared, no one can say precisely how or when. 
The story of the water in the public baths of Alexandria being 
heated during six months by the burning volumes of the pub- 
lic library, if not altogether untrue, can easily explain how the 
old works of Hermes ceased to exist, as the same destructive 
measure must have been carried out all over the country. But 
previously to this, the Christians, by publishing false Hermetic 
books, which circulated more freely in a Christian country than 
the authentic ones, written in a character soon forgotten ; and 
before them the ISTeoplatonic philosophers of Alexandria, by a 
series of analogous forgeries, contributed, likewise, considerably 



21.6 



GENTILISM. 



towards their disappearance. To understand this more fully, a 
few remarks on the compilation itself will not be inappropriate. 

In the common opinion of all, they had been written origi- 
nally by Tlioth himself ; that is, they were divine ; as, indeed, 
were the Vedas in the belief of the Hindoos. Tlioth was the 
Egyptian Logos ; for the name means " speech " or " word." 
The real authors of the Hermetic books, therefore, were un- 
known ; and thus the compilation was supposed to contain a 
real "revelation" from heaven, from the Divine Word itself. 

"We have seen that, according to St. Clement of Alexandria, 
they were forty-two in number in his time. Iambhchus pre- 
tended there were of them as many as twenty thousand ; and 
Manet ho, not satisfied with this, made them equal in number 
to the astronomical cycle of thirty-six thousand five hundred 
and twenty-five. But these pretensions were evidently fabu- 
lous. The opinion of the Alexandrian Father of the Church 
is the only reasonable one ; especially as he goes into details 
and mentions how many of them related to geometry, geogra- 
phy, and astronomy, to cosmogony and theological science, to 
law anil justice, to the religious ritual, prayers, sacrifices, pro- 
cessions, etc. ; finally to medicine, anatomy, physiology, and 
sexual considerations. 

Many ancient classical authors distinguished two different 
Thoths or Hermes ; the first, real and divine, the Thoth o£ 
whom we have just spoken ; and another much later, bearing 
the name of Trismegistus, given him chiefly by the ISTeopla- 
tonie philosophers and the mediaeval alchy mists. According 
to many ancient writers the books given to Egypt by the first 
Thoth were no more in existence. But those of the second 
personage were of ahnost, if not quite, equal authority; and 
these were, in fact, the only ones known to the Egypt of the 
Pharaohs. This distinction is no more taken into account by 
modern writers on the subject ; although it does not appear to 
us to be deserving altogether of neglect. On the strength of 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFEICA. 



217 



it we must be permitted to conjecture that idolatry penetrated 
into Egypt very soon after the first settlement of the country 
by Menes ; and that thus the pure monotheism contained in 
the doctrine of the first Thoth was so anciently corrupted 
by the innovations of Trismegistus, that the memory of the 
first was only preserved in a vague tradition. This certainly 
did not happen to the Hindoo Yedas, whose primitive pure 
text remained yet clear in many upanishads, even after the 
progress of time had spread new and false interpretations of 
the primeval dogmas. 

Be this as it may, we are compelled to limit our investiga- 
tions to the Hermetic books, such as they existed during many 
ages in the country ; and to ask ourselves if we can find here 
and there in antiquity a few fragments from which we may 
infer something of the original belief of the people contained 
in them. 

Had we the forty-two volumes known to exist by St. Cle- 
ment, we might find in them numerous allusions of a most pre- 
cious character, able to guide us in our investigations. But, as 
we hinted above, when the Christian religion came to be that 
of all Egyptians, in the fourth or fifth century of our era, two 
kinds of spurious Hermetic volumes were spread all over the 
country, and helped to the complete disappearance of the gen- 
uine work. First in point of time certainly, some of the Neo- 
platonists, chiefly Iamblichus, Porphyry, and, later on, Proclus, 
thought they had found in the old Egyptian literature arms 
agaiust Christianity, which they opposed all their life. Hence 
they tried to uphold- polytheism by explaining away its absurdi- 
ties, through a series of philosophical speculations ; in about 
the same way as our modern " mythologists " try their best to 
render not only tolerable to reason, but even' worthy of admira- 
tion and respect, the idolatrous rites of ancient nations. One 
of them, Thomas Taylor, an English pagan enthusiast, the 
translator of Apuleras' " God of Socrates, 1 ' commenting on 



218 



GENTILISM. 



the work of Proclus on the " Timseus of Plato," at the end of 
a long praise of Egyptian and Greek mythology, dares to say : 
" If we unite this with the preceding theory, there is nothing in 
the ancient theology (meaning polytheism) that will not appear 
admirably sublime and beautifully connected, accurate in all its 
parts, scientific and divine." This admiration of Egyptian poly- 
theism the Neoplatonists of Alexandria endeavored to render 
prevalent, chiefly by using the Hermetic books for their pur- 
pose, adapting them to their philosophical ideas, and draw- 
ing from them a doctrine apparently acceptable to modern 
reason. But in that operation the original text must have 
been subjected to a great many exegetic changes. And as 
that text was rendered in those characters and that style which 
we have called "hieratic," and which gradually became un- 
known as the pagan worship was superseded by Christianity, a 
new form of the Hermetic books was gradually introduced which 
served to obliterate the memory of the former ones ; especially 
as the new were written in Greek, a language well known to all, 
while the old hieratic Egyptian style fell into complete disuse. 

The Christians, on their side, seeing what was done to spread 
error by means of the ancient literature of the country, began 
to study it anew, and found, in the primitive volumes of Her- 
mes, many passages which appeared to them corroborative of 
Christian dogmas. Thus Egypt soon received a new edition of 
them, and the original books were destined to be buried in a 
deeper oblivion than ever. The subsequent violent destruction 
caused by the Mohammedan fanaticism completed the wreck. 
And if we inquire, finally, why, in Ilindostan, the Vedas were 
preserved in spite of so many revolutions and invasions, and 
why Mohammedanism, in particular, did not destroy them, 
whilst it gave the last stroke to the existence of the Hermetic 
books in Egypt, an obvious answer is at hand. The Hindoo 
priesthood never perished ; and it subsists to this day, intent 
as much as ever on the keeping, preserving, and studying its 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



219 



sacred books. The Egyptian priesthood, to which was intrusted 
the same particular care of the hooks of Hermes, ceased to 
exist altogether when Christianity succeeded at length in con- 
verting the whole country, and in abolishing altogether the 
worship of Osiris and Isis. 

III. 

But let us ask ourselves the question, Why is it that the Keo- 
platonists, and after them the Christians, attached, so much 
impoi'tance to effecting alterations of the text of the Egyptian 
Sacred Scripture 1 Did the new books retain something, at least, 
of their primitive contents ? The l\ r eoplatonist philosophy has 
attracted the notice of many philosophers in our age, but of 
none more than of Victor Cousin, the celebrated French Ec- 
lectic, who popularized the ideas, on the subject, of Fichte and 
others in Germany. Later on, Simon, Barthelemy St. Hilaire, 
Lewes, and Tennemann, completed the work ; and we may say 
that the tendencies and the doctrines of the school are now thor- 
oughly appreciated. It is admitted by all that its main object 
was to give to polytheism a' scientific basis ; " that the chief 
means used for that purpose was the mixture of Oriental mys- 
ticism with Plato's ideas ; that theurgy, or magic, had a 
great function to fulfil in the system, by attracting the morbid 
curiosity so prevalent at the time ; and, finally, that the writ- 
ings of Hermes were the chief source of the new inspiration. 
Proclus believed them divine. Long before him Iamblichus, 
Porphyry, and the other chief adepts of the sect, quoted them 
in support of their opinions. And, to favor their design, 
a Greek edition of fifteen volumes of Hermes was published at 
Athens, according to St. Cyril of Alexandria, under the title : 
EpfiaiKa TrevT£K,aidetca (3ij3?iia. 

Mosheim, in his notes on Cudworth's " Systema Intellectual e," 
pretends that all the spurious books of Hermes were the work 



220 



GENTILISM. 



of deluded Christians, and that if the Neoplatonists began, 
after a while, to give a false interpretation of them, it was only 
in pure retaliation. But the contrary is proved ; and the help 
given to JSTeoplatonisna by these forgeries is a well-established 
fact. As to the time of their first appearance, nothing is 
known for certain. Of the Fathers of the Church, Origen' 
and St. Clement of Alexandria, seem to have been ignorant of 
them, and to have hern acquainted only with the genuine 
Hermetic books. Lactantius, however, was acquainted with 
them, and had perused them at the very beginning of the 
fourth century ; and all the subsequent Greek and Latin 
Fathers mention them. Of the Neoplatonists, Ammonius 
Saccas, the founder of the sect, and Plotinus, who succeeded 
him, appear to have been unacquainted with those Greek for- 
geries. But Iamblichus and his successors, Proclus chiefly, 
made constant use of them. It seems clear that the end of the 
third century is the real epoch of their appearance, and that 
Christianity had not yet triumphed when they were first pub- 
lished. Hence the prophecy contained in one of the spurious 
volumes (the " Asclepius "), of the total conversion of Egypt, of 
the possession taken of the pagan temples by the bones of 
Christian martyrs, etc. — a prophecy which St. Augustine (De 
Civ. Dei, Lib. viii., Cap. xxiii.) considered as a proof of the 
terror of devils at the near triumph of truth, and which 
Casaubon and Mosheim found too clear to be true, and attrib- 
uted, consequently, to Christians after it had been itself accom- 
plished, becomes a positive historical fact, established now 
by modem criticism. 

But, such being the case, it seems that we cannot, with per- 
fect certainty, know from them what was the genuine doctrine 
of the primitive books of Thoth. Yet very important conse- 
quences follow from this statement of facts ; and the general 
tendency of the original Egyptian belief may be gathered from 
it to a great extent, at least. 



CENTEAL ASIA AND AEEICA. 



221 



First, the forgery must have been a clever one, and have 
retained a great deal of the primitive volumes not to have been 
exposed at once. When the Greek edition was published at 
Athens, the pagan worship, as described by St. Clement, was 
yet prevalent in Egypt, aud the genuine work of Thoth, in 
hieratic style, still existed in all pagan temples. Many Greek 
scholars of Alexandria knew yet the Egyptian language, and 
•must have been acquainted with the genuine writings of Her- 
mes. Indeed Iamblichns, in a fragment which we yet possess, 
asserts this to have been the case. And, what is yet more to 
the purpose, he mentions that the very question of the genuine- 
ness of the Greek edition was raised in his time. Porphyry, 
in a letter to An ebon, an Egyptian priest, had stated that 
Chsereinon objected to this interpretation, and he wished to 
know, from a man well versed in both languages, what was the 
truth in the matter. The reply of Anebon has not come down 
to us ; but Iamblichns gives the substance of it by stating, 
that " the Greek books which go under the name of Hermes, 
contain really the Hermaic doctrine, although they use the 
phraseology of Greek philosophers ; for they were translated 
from the Egyptian language by men well versed in philosophy." 
"We may conclude that much of the writings of Thoth' was 
contained in the Hellenic version. 

But, secondly, the question comes, How can we distinguish 
the genuine from the spurious ? ISTo doubt, much obscurity 
must always surround the subject. Yet, we may possibly make 
a step further in advance, by asking, what was the object of 
the authors of this deception ? It was evidently to help the 
cause of Neoplatonism — this is admitted, now, by all — to give 
to polytheism a scientific basis, by using both Plato's writ- 
ings and those of Hermes, better known than the Brahminical 
books, namely : by uniting positive Hellenic philosophy with 
Oriental mysticism. The main object was to rescue polytheism 
from the load of opprobrium cast upon it both by Greek seep- 



222 



GENTILISM. 



tics of Lucian's type, and Christian apologists, as Arnobius, 
Miuutius Felix, and others. An nnextinguishahle laughter had 
spread all over the world at the expense of that poor paganism. 
Lucian of Samosata had started it by his pungent sarcasm. 
His books were in the hands of all. And, to make matters 
worse, those hateful and contemptible Christians had found a 
never-dying well of pure wit in the remarkable adventures of 
gods and goddesses. Hence, the whole world was turning its 
back on that ridiculous mythology, and looking for a more ra- 
tional religion even in the teachings of the Galilean fishermen. 
How could the movement be arrested more successfully than 
by combining what was highest in paganism — the sublimity 
of Plato's clear doctrine, with the strange, startling, grand the- 
ism of ancient seers, like Thoth, whose very origin went far- 
ther back than the memory of man, and the revelation of his- 
tory could go ? Plato, after all, with his monotheism, sacrificed 
to inferior gods; and Hermes, by his mystic language, had 
given rise to the grand pantheism of Orpheus, whence the sub- 
sequent polytheism had sprung. Iamblichus and Porphyry 
could now successfully resist the attacks of Christians, support- 
ed, as those writers were, by the highest and noblest efforts of 
human genius, the utterances of Thoth and of Plato. The whole 
history of ISTeoplatonism, at least from the time of Iamblichus 
down, seems to us to be comprised in this short description. 
And let our reader mark it well : the philosophy which the 
Neoplatonists endeavored to propagate, was to start from a 
supreme, self-existent, all-powerful God — the Absolute. So well 
had Christianity succeeded, in three hundred years, in estab- 
lishing the essential truth of monotheism, that no theory, no 
speculation, no philosophy could hope to acquire adherents, 
and procure a following which did not propose to the venera- 
tion of mankind a great Father and Lord of all. 

This was the first condition of success. And all the leaders 
of the system, from Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus, down to 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



223 



Proclus and his disciples, have been careful to place at the head 
of all a Supreme, Infinite Being, whom we all call God. And 
this they found in the books of Thoth as well as in those of 
Plato. The dialogue, " Asclepius," already quoted, contains a 
very remarkable passage, which, since the modern discoveries 
in Hindooism, must be admitted to have really belonged to the 
old work of Thoth, since it reproduces so exactly the primitive 
Hindoo doctrine on monotheism, providence, and renovation 
of worlds by cataclysm and fire. We quote the Latin transla- 
tion as given by Cudworth. (Syst. Intell., vol. i., p. 492) : 
"Tune ille Donvinus et pater Deus, primipotens et unus guber- 
nator mundi, intuens in mores facta que hominum, voluntate 
sua (qtcce est Dei benignitas), vitiis resistens, et corruptees 
crrorem revocans, malignitatem omnem vel alluvione diluens, 
vet igne consumens, ad antiquam faeiem mundum revocabit." 
And a few pages further Cudworth quotes the following lines : 
" Summus qui dicitur Deus, rector gubernatorque sensibilis 
mundi, qui in se comjplectitur omnerti locum omnemque re- 
rum sihbstaMtiamP Mosheim, it is true, remarks in his notes, 
that the same Hermetic dialogue is full of the most super- 
stitious ideas on the worship of idols. From this we may 
conclude that the primitive doctrine did not remain pure in 
the writings of Hermes Trismegistus. But the texts just 
quoted cannot be explained except on the supposition of a 
belief in one God ; whilst the admixture of superstition with 
truth is only what we have already found in the Hindoo Vedas. 
This exactly served the purpose of the Neoplatonists ; and they 
accepted both sides of the doctrine. They adopted the high and 
the true in order to help themselves in advocating and teach- 
ing the low and the false. 

IV. 

We ought not to be surprised that the sacred books of the 

Egyptians contained originally a sublime faith, since many 
16 



224 



GENTILISM. 



ancient authors concur in attributing it to them. The philoso- 
phers and poets of antiquity have often spoken with admira- 
tion of their esoteric doctrine. And travellers, even such as 
Herodotus, when relating the absurd and occasionally revolting 
sights which presented themselves to them exteriorly in the 
country, often refer to secret explanations, which set them 
forth as connected with a high and pure doctrine. Origen 
himself alludes to it (Contra. Cels., Lib. 1, Cap. xii.), when he 
says: "With regard to the statement of Celsus, that he is ac- 
quainted with all our doctrines, .... he appears to me to speak 
very much as a person would do, who visited Egypt (where the 
Egyptians, learned in their country's literature, are greatly 
given to philosophizing about those things which are regarded 
among them as divine, but where the vulgar, hearing certain 
myths the reasons of which they do not understand, are greatly 
elated because of their fancied knowledge), and who should 
imagine that he knows the whole circle of Egyptian science, 
after having been a disciple of the ignorant alone, and without 
having associated with any of the priests, or having learned 
their mysteries from any other source." 

We have no doubt that many of those pretended deep 
secrets were, after all, very flimsy affairs, and could not satisfy 
a serious and inquisitive mind. Yet it cannot be denied that 
some of the greatest Sages of Greece, who travelled through 
the country and heard the comments of the priests on the 
exterior symbols of religion, professed themselves admirers of a 
wisdom which they thought could not then be found anywhere 
else on earth. 

The dogma of a positive creation of the universe, for instance, 
seems to have been one of those esoteric traditions kept in the 
land of mystery. Simplicius, at least, who lived, it is true, 
only in the sixth century, but who is considered by Bruckner 
and Fabricius as one of the greatest pagan philosophers, whose 
commentaries on Epictetus and Aristotle were translated into 



CENTKAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



225 



Latin, first, and afterwards into English and French in the 
seventeenth century, as the best in existence, did not scruple to 
say that " if the legislator of the Jews affirmed that God in 
the beginning created heaven and earth, . . . and separated 
light from ' darkness,' etc, let an intelligent man know that 
this is merely a fabulous tradition born altogether of Egyptian 
myths." (In Arist., Lib. viii.) For Simplicius, so late as the 
reign of Justinian, believed in the eternity of the world. 

The immortality of the soul, coupled, as in India, with the 
doctrine of transmigration, was publicly affirmed by their care 
in embalming bodies to which the soul was to return in three 
thousand years. Thus they admitted a real resurrection of the 
body. 

Of the existence of one Supreme God we have already 
spoken ; but the teaching that " man ought to love and fear 
Him " is curiously illustrated by St. Clement of Alexandria, 
(Strom., Book v., Chap, v.) : "The Egyptians place sphinxes 
before their temples, to signify that the doctrine respecting 
God is enigmatical and obscure ; perhaps, also, to teach men 
that we ought both.to love and fear the Divine Being ; to love 
Him as gentle and benign to the pious ; to fear Him as inexor- 
ably just to the impious ; for the sphinx shows the image of a 
wild beast and of a human being together." 

It is very remarkable, that, not only the ancient Greek 
philosophers who visited Egjpt, not only the JSTeoplatonists, 
Iamblichus, Porphyry, Proclus, etc., but even the Greek 
Fathers of the Church, chiefly those who could form a correct 
judgment of it, Origen, St. Clement, and St. Cyril of Alexan- 
dria, speak nearly always with respect of the mysterious 
doctrine of the Egyptians, and certainly attribute to them a 
real belief in monotheism. There are, assuredly, positive asser- 
tions in St. Justin Martyr (Cohortat ad Grsecos), in St. Cyprian 
(De idol, vanitate), in St. Augustine (De baptism o, Lib. vi. § 87), 
in St. Cyril of Alexandria (Lib. 1, Contra Julianum), to the effect 



226 



GENTILISM. 



that the books of Hermes acknowledged a supreme, ineffable, 
and eternal God. St. Justin Martyr states positively that His 
name was Amnion. 

Hence, after the Neoplatonists had produced, in support of 
their doctrine, the translation of the Hermetic books of which 
we spoke, the Christians likewise published their own, and 
among others the book called "Poemander '' and the "Sermo in 
in o ute de regeneratione." Marsilio Ficino, who tried to revive 
Platonism under the Medici in Florence, gave an edition of 
them, which, we think, it would be hard now to procure. But 
it suffices for our purpose to know what was the object of the 
original compilers. They wished to deprive their adversary — 
the pagans of a weapon which they had found useful. We 
do not pretend to decide on the morality of their action. Was 
it confined to reproducing only the text of some of the old 
Hermetic writings? which would have been fair; or did it 
include real literary forgery ? No one can say. It is known 
to the literary world how frequent was the use of such forged 
tools, about the same time. We cannot enter into the examin- 
ation of the question. We conclude from it only that, even 
then, when the genuine works attributed to Hermes were 
certainly yet in existence, the Christians could truly claim a 
great resemblance between several tenets of old Egypt and their 
own. 

But, a new argument offers itself to our consideration, and it 
is one of no inconsiderable importance. If the Egyptians 
worshipped at first one God only — as the Hindoos did, viz. : 
Brahma (neuter) — there must have been for them some divine 
name superior to any other, corresponding to the Jehovah of 
the Jews, the Brahma of the Hindoos, the Ormuzd of the 
Bactrians. What was it? It was Amun (simpliciter), not 
Amun-Ra. 

First, the worship of Amun was not confined to Egypt, but 
extended over to Ethiopia, and some say to a great part of 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



227 



interior Africa. The temple built south-west of Lake Mareo- 
tis was not the most important, nor the most ancient one. The 
centre out of which the worship of Aniun radiated was in fact 
in Ethiopia, not far from, and south-east of Meroe. Hence 
the Greeks called that god sometimes Zevg Ai(3vnb<;, Libya being 
for them the name of Africa. It was not, therefore, a local 
god, of later origin, embalming a fact of previous history with 
respect to a single city, or to a particular district of the country. 
It was the chief God of the whole continent, and had not a 
human history like Osiris and Isis, both of whom, according to 
Plutarch (De Iside et Osiride), had " passed to goclship from 
the inferior state of good genii," or men. Hence, although 
the cult of these two last divinities extended to all Egypt, that 
of Osiris was altogether local, at Abydos ; and that of Isis, at 
Bubastis. The worship of Amun could not be said to have 
been local, even at Thebes, although the sacred name of that 
city was JSfo-Amun. The temple in Ethiopia, near Shendy, 
consequently on the borders of Central Africa, and near the 
confluence of the White and Blue ISTiles, was certainly more 
august, ancient, and peculiar to Amun than any other in Egypt 
and out of it. The discoveries of Caillaud and Elphinstone, 
commented upon by Heeren in his " Researches on African 
Nations," have placed the fact beyond question ; and all those 
acquainted with the origin and state of the various religions of 
antiquity will admit its importance. Great difficulties sur- 
rounded the question, because of the frequent indistinctness of 
ancient classical authors with respect to topography and local 
details. Hence, even learned men in modern times had 
become persuaded that the Ammonium so celebrated in anti- 
quity was at Siwah in Lybia, west of Memphis, not far from 
Lake Mareotis ; and the worship of Amun was thought to be 
altogether Egyptian. But after a deep and critical investigation 
such as the celebrated Professor of Gottingen knew so well how 
to accomplish, comparing the text and plates of the two French 



228 



GENTILISM. 



and English travellers (Caillaud and Elphinstone), with what ' 
old classical writers have reported, he gave a complete demon- 
stration of the 'fact that the great temple of Aniim was south 
of Meroe in Ethiopia, near Shendy, almost at the confluence of 
the two Xiles. Then, entering into a long and learned discus- 
sion of what antiquity has said of this country, he showed that 
the time of its greatest splendor was the eighth century hefore 
Christ, when Sabaco, Senechus, and Tarhaco ruled it; that at 
the period of Solomon, ten centuries before our era, at the time 
of the Trojan war — we invite special attention to this — it could 
send large armies to the conquest of foreign countries ; that 
many monuments of Nubia and Ethiopia, still in full preserva- 
tion, represent Harnesses, or Sesostris, with as much splendor as 
at Thebes and Luxor ; and drew hence the inevitable conclusion 
that it was a civilized country fifteen centuries before Christ. 
This brings us nearly to Moses, whom Josephus represents as 
commanding the armies of Pharaoh, and conquering the South, 
and Ileeren can conclude in these words : " History itself 
has carried us back to those ages in which the formation of the 
most ancient States took place, and has thus far shown that 
Meroe was one of them." This brings the belief in Amun to 
the times of the highest antiquity. But the most important 
details mentioned by the celebrated writer we have not yet 
stated: The first is, that although ISTubia and Ethiopia are full 
of splendid monuments, some of them of the purest Egyptian 
art, with all the richness of architecture and sculpture that has 
rendered the land of the Pharaohs so celebrated ; although the 
language of the travellers who first visited them is most positive 
on the subject : " These colossal figures," says Caillaud, " are 
remarkable for the richness of their drapery and the character 
of the drawing ; their feet and arms are stouter than the Egyp- 
tian, yet they are altogether in the Egyptian style ;" and " Rup- 
pel," says Heeren, " notices a similar perfection on the pyramids 
of Kurgos in the same neighborhood ;" yet when they come to 



CENTKAL ASIA AND AFKICA. 



229 



examine the mass of noble ruins which the Professor of Gottin- 
gen declares emphatically to be " The ancient oracle oe 
Jupiter Ammon," everything is of quite a different character. 
" The rarity of sculpture and hieroglyphs," he relates, "is very 
remarkable ; no trace of that Egyptian art has been discovered 
here. The few figures on the pillars, now scarcely visible, have 
nothing in common with it. One of them has evidently the 
hair done up in the broad Nubian fashion." The reason is 
plain : this edifice is more ancient than all the other monu- 
ments. It existed, probably, before the folly of idolatry had 
covered Africa with the representation of polytheistic myths. 
Thus with respect to Amun, the monuments agree with history. 
Another, and most important fact, which we think extremely 
significant, is given by Heeren in the following words : " One 
thing is very remarkable, namely, that of all the representations 
of Nubia yet known, there is not one, which, according to our 
notions, is offensive to decency." They are, therefore, anterior 
to the introduction of obscene emblems in the public worship 
of the people. At least we are allowed to think so until the 
contrary is proved by monuments as yet undiscovered. The 
same strange fact we have already remarked in Hindostan. 

But a third, and, if possible, more striking conclusion drawn 
by Heeren himself from all the facts accumulated in his 
" Researches " is this : that although he does not believe that 
all the civilization of Egypt came from Ethiopia, but thinks 
that a part of it was native, and even reacted on Ethiopia 
itself by conquest, institutions, religion, and art ; yet he is most 
positive in asserting that " colonies of the priest-caste spread 
from Meroe into Egypt." This happened according to the 
oracle of Amnion : " They undertook their expeditions at the 
time and to the place appointed by the god " (Herodot, ii. 29). 
And the learned writer goes on investigating this civilizing 
religious process from Central Africa to the basin of the lower 
Nile, and tries to prove that Merawe, Ammonium in the Lybian 



230 



GENTILISM. 



desert, west of Memphis, and Thebes — Amun-No — with, its cele- 
brated temple of the same deity, were really colonies originally 
from Ethiopia, from the old temple of Amun there ; and he 
thinks he finds his own historical researches confirmed by the 
discoveries of Gan, Champollion, and others in their studies 
of the monuments of Upper and Lower Egypt. 

This last conclusion of the Gottingen Professor is now con- 
sidered as disproved by the monuments. "As for the opinion 
once generally admitted " (say P. Lenormant and E. Chcvallier 
in their Ancient History of the East, Tom. 1) " that the 
Egyptians belonged to an African race whose first centre of 
civilization was at Meroe, and who had gradually descended 
from the banks of the Nile to the sea, it cannot now be sus- 
tained. We know, in fact, from the monuments, that the 
most ancient centre of Egyptian civilization was in the neigh- 
borhood of Memphis, in Lower and Central Egypt, before 
even the foundation of Thebes ; and we can follow the gradual 
march of culture, ascending the Nile towards Ethiopia, in a 
way exactly the reverse of what has hitherto been supposed." 

The recent researches and discovories of new explorers, 
chiefly of Mariette-Bey, seem certainly to afford a sufficient 
proof of this last opinion. Yet Heeren had so many very 
plausible reasons to give in support of his conclusions, that 
they may yet be reinstated in general acceptance ; and it is for 
this we have given them in some detail. At any rate, the 
extreme anticpiity of the civilization of Ethiopia, and the cer- 
tainty of the worship of Amun at Meroe in the most remote 
ages, cannot be " disproved," and amply suffice for the estab- 
lishment of our own thesis. 

Finally, a last remarkable opinion of Heeren we will quote 
in his own words, and pass on to look more closely at Amun 
himself, the real object of our actual investigations. " With- 
out digressing," he says, " into a detailed description of par- 
ticular deities, which I leave to mythologists, I think I may 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFEICA. 



231 



venture a step further, and assert that this worship of Amun 
had its origin in natural religion connected with agriculture." 
The underline is ours ; but we think that, in th3 opinion of all, 
- natural religion implies monotheism. 

Y. 

And, now, who was Amun 1 We have said already that we 
do not mean. Amun-Ra. This last god, He'/uof in Greek, 
begins to appear on the monuments of the eighteenth dynasty 
only. He is therefore a comparatively modern invention, and 
we will shortly find in it a corroboration of our peculiar belief 
on the gradual progress of idolatry. 

It seems that even in the temple of Karnac at Thebes, which 
is more recent than the old one of Meroe, whence his statue 
has disappeared, he is represented as sitting alone on a throne, 
holding the symbols of life and power, and wearing a crown 
with a peculiar ornament of two feathers, and a band falling 
behind and hanging down to his feet. This is a very un- 
Egyptian appearance of a deity. 

And what was said of the extent of his worship does not yet 
realize all the idea the ancients had of it. According to many, 
he was not only the Supreme God of Africa, but if we listen to 
the certainly learned poet Lucan (Pharsal, Lib. ix. v. 517, 518) : 

" Quarnvis ^Ethiopum populis Arabumque beatis, 
Gentibus atque Indis unus sit Jupiter Amnion." 

Lucan seems thus to have entertained the thought that Amun 
of Africa, and Brahma of Hindostan, were the same Supreme 
God ; and the word unus he employs is remarkable, as, in his 
time, Egypt had more gods than any other country on earth. 
Yet he thus acknowledges that there was one infinitely superior 
to all the others. Hence, even in our time, all admit that in 



232 



GENTILISM". 



the Egyptian mythology "Amun held the highest place." But 
Egyptologists recognize, likewise, that his character was unde- 
fined, as was also that of Brahma ; and thus inferior deities 
were identified with each of the two in hoth countries, as if 
no being could share in the divine honors unless he received 
something from the Head one, which was thus the original 
fountain of divinity. This has not hitherto been sufficiently 
considered. 

AVe ought not, therefore, to he surprised that the very word 
Amun means " hidden," " invisible," " unapproachable to our 
undei'standing." And there is a curious passage on the subject 
in Plutarch (De Iside et Osiride), which makes allusion to an 
Egyptian custom quite significant to our purpose : 

" Manetho the Sebennite " (the author of the celebrated list 
of kings), " thinks that the word Amnn means ' hidden,' and 
also ' the act of concealing oneself ' (tcpv^iv) ; and Hecataeus 
of Abdera says that the Egyptians use that expression when 
they call each other " (probably in the dark) ; " for the word 
itself indicates invocation. And as they think that the First 
God is the same with the Universe, as being obscure and con- 
cealed, they say they call on Amun and pray to Him that He 
may unveil His face and allow them to see Him." 

In the time of Hecataeus of Abdera, five hundred years be- 
fore Christ, it was certainly true that the Egyptians thought 
" that the Eirst God was the same with the Universe." They 
even thought worse than this, as we shall see. But is this a 
reason for concluding that it had always been so ? The very 
words of our author show the contrary. The " Universe " is 
not certainly a " hidden " being. There is no need of calling 
on it to unveil its face. It was precisely on account of the 
true God being invisible, that in the course of ages corruption 
of belief had crept in, and substituted for an "invisible" God 
a visible Universe ; for Monotheism the ancient Pantheism of 
Orpheus. The phrase, therefore, on which we comment. 



CENTKAL ASIA AND AFEICA. 



233 



renders the passage of Hecatreus, as quoted by Plutarch, unin- 
telligible ; and the only way to clear it up is to suppress the 
parenthesis (the First God is the same with the Universe), and 
to say, merely : " The Egyptians use that expression — Amun — 
when they call each other in the dark ; for the word itself in- 
dicates invocation ; and as they think that the First God is in 
His nature obscure and concealed, they say they call on Amun 
and pray to Him, that He may unveil His face and allow them 
to see Him." 

The text being now intelligible, throws a flood of light on 
the divine nature of Amun ; and we cannot but remember the 
beautiful passages of the Yedic upanishads where we have read 
that " God sees everything and is not seen ; that He hears all 
and is not heard, etc.," and praying " that we may know Him 
and love Him, by seeing Him face to face." 

But modern Egyptologists object that all those passages of 
old classic writers are unreliable. Difficulties have been raised 
about them without end ; and this is true. Science, they say, 
is now positivist, and cannot be satisfied with conjectures ; 
with etymologies, conclusions drawn from some stray passage 
of an old author, etc. Hence for Egypt, particularly, all the 
authority of ancient lore ought to be discarded ; and, as the 
monuments say very little on the primitive religion of Egypt, 
we had better acknowledge our ignorance, and merely state 
what appears on the monuments under our very eyes — that 
Anubis had the head of a dog, Thoth that of a hawk or ibis, 
Isis that of a cow, Amun, finally, the great Amun, that of a 
ram. 

To this we demur most emphatically. Our kuowledge of 
the Egyptian religion is not derived only from stray bits of old 
manuscripts, from conjectural etymologies, from very doubtful 
conclusions, etc., etc. But, as our readers have seen, there has 
beeD in Grecian antiquity a positive public opinion on the sub- 
ject, asserting that the first Egyptians worshipped one Supreme 



234 



GENTILISM. 



God. This has been corroborated by the general belief of the 
oldest Fathers of the Church, of those most likely to know the 
truth. The researches of more modern authors have, un- 
doubtedly, taken the same direction ; and many Egyptologists 
of our age acknowledge the force of all those sources of infor- 
mation, and find that the monuments often hold the same lan- 
guage. 

For, although, owing to the very few inscriptions and papyri 
relating to the primitive religion of Egypt, which have been 
so far discovered and deciphered, our demonstration derived 
from these cannot be but partial and fragmentary ; yet 
the few words of real antiquity on the oldest monuments 
which have reached us, are emphatic, and of a most striking 
character. 

These have been chiefly found in sepulchres or on funereal 
columns, where the true meaning of the inner religious feeling 
of the old Egyptians would be more surely met with than even 
in temples erected designedly for idolatrous purposes. Mr. 
Viscount E. de Rouge has. given a strict translation of several 
of them, which, after due discussion, has been only strength- 
ened by the labors of other French, German, and English 
Egyptologists, so as to be considered now as proof against con- 
tradiction. 

"We quote the very words of the noble author. They are 
taken from a " Conference sur la Religion des Anciens Egyp- 
tiens," published at Paris in 1869. 

" Xobody," he says, " has been able to directly dissent from 
our interpretation of the chief texts on which we think we can 
establish the belief of ancient Egypt, with respect to God, the 
world, and man. 

" I have said on God, not on the gods. The first character 
of the old Egyptian religion is the Unity of God, expressed 
most energetically : God one, sole, unique ; no others with Him 
■ — He is the only Being living in truth — Thou ovrt one; cmd 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



235 



millions of beings issue from Thee — He has made everything, 
and alone He has not been made. 

" Second character : God exists by Himself • He is the only 
Being who has not been generated. The old Egyptians con- 
ceived God as the active cause, the perpetual source of His own 
existence ; He engenders Himself perpetually. God A Se. 
Hence, the idea of God under two aspects : the Father and the 
Son. In many hymns is found the notion of a double being en- 
gendering himself i the soul in twins, as the funereal ritual 
speaks . . . ." 

Mr. de Rouge, however, in these last texts could have easily 
seen the first step to pantheism, and a visible copy of the later 
Vedic Hindooism. It is creation by emanation. 

Yet, " on the subject of creation," several texts quoted by 
the same writer, express certainly the true doctrine. God has 
made the Heavens ; — He has created the earth ; — He has made 
all that exists / — lie is the master of beings and of non-beings. 
" These texts," he adds, " date from fifteen hundred years at 
least before Moses. According to the same hymns, God has 
regulated the order of nature ; the sovereign rights of the 
Creator cannot be more clearly asserted." But he confesses 
that, " as to the origin of matter the old Egyptians seem to have 
believed that the world was eternally engendered .... they 
thus fall into the doctrine of direct emanation ; hence the 
deification of the Nile, of animals, of all that exist." Mr. de 
Rouge might have seen that pantheism was contained in some 
of the texts in which he saw only the unity and immensity of 
God. Several striking passages, however, which we have 
translated from him in the previous paragraphs, show no sign 
of any error even in inception, and confirm powerfully what 
was quoted previously from Greek authors, and from what re 
mains to us of the Hermetic books. 

Mr. Mariette, in his " Notice sur les Monuments da Musee de 
Boulaq," indicates several striking similarities between the 



236 



GENTILISM. 



Egyptian cosmogony and the Hebrew traditions contained in 
Genesis. He says : " In the Egyptian cosmogony, Knouphis 
is the first demiurgos ; his name is analogous to the Hebrew 
nouf breathing, spirit. Ou a monument at Philae, he is 
called : He who has made all that is, the creator of beings / the 
first existing being, the father of fat! hers, the mother of mothers. 
On several papyri he is represented sailing on the primeval 
ocean. The Egyptian spirit thus carried on the waters, calls to 
mind the passage of Genesis : ' And the Spirit of God was borne 
on the waters.' " Several other striking analogies are quoted 
by the same learned author, the most celebrated of recent or 
of any other discoverers. 

There is no need of mentioning the belief of the Egyptians 
in the immortality of the soul. In the creed of no ancient 
nation was it more clearly defined. But, since the discovery 
of the " Funereal Ritual," on which Mr. de Rouge has pub- 
lished most important " Etudes," many details hitherto un- 
known have rendered this truth more definitely settled. This 
discovery has increased the universal regret that all the Her- 
metic books, of which this was probably a small fragment, are 
in all appearance lost for ever. 

"We will quote of it only the defence of the soul before the 
judgment seat of Osiris, and his terrible forty-two assessors. 
TVe quote from the " Ancient History of the East " : "I have 
not blasphemed," says the deceased ; " I have not smitten men 
privily ; I have not treated any person with cruelty ; I have not 
stirred up trouble ; I have not been idle ; I have not been in- 
toxicated ; I have not made unjust commandments ; I have 
showed no improper curiosity ; I have not allowed my mouth 
to tell secrets ; I have not wounded any one ; I have not put 
any one in fear ; I have not slandered any one ; I have not let 
envy gnaw my heart ; I have spoken evil neither of the king 
nor of my father ; I have not falsely accused any one ; I have 
not withheld milk from the mouths of sucklings ; I have not 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



237 



practised any shameful crime ; I have not calumniated a slave 
to his master." This is, indeed, the judgment after death — 
post hoc autem judicium. 

And, after this " negative confession," as Champollion called 
it, the deceased man speaks of the positive good he has done in 
his lifetime : " I have made to the gods the offerings that were 
their due ; I have given food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, 
and clothes to the naked," etc. 

Such a high morality supposed certainly a pure dogmatic 
doctrine ; for corruption of belief brings on necessarily corrup- 
tion of manners ; and " without doubt," F. Lenormant says, 
" it was this clear insight into truth, this tenderness of con- 
science, which obtained for the Egyptians this reputation of 
wisdom, echoed even by Holy Scripture " (1 Kings iv. 30 ; 
Acts vii. 27). 

There is no doubt, certainly, that the clear assertion of a pure 
monotheism and of an undefiled morality, was not considered 
in Egypt, at least during the ages well known to us, as fit to 
be published everywhere and communicated to every one. 
Everybody knows that this was reserved only for the educated 
and higher classes of society. It was the esoteric doctrine re- 
vealed to a comparative few. But it had not probably been so 
at the very beginning ; we cannot know when the unnatural 
distinction began. We can scarcely be sure for how long it , 
was preserved. It is certain tbat, in the age of Herodotus and 
Plato, the esoteric doctrine was yet taught in the interior of 
the temples ; and the father of history, who has preserved for 
us the knowledge of many ridiculous fables, has likewise posi- 
tively asserted that "the Egyptians of Thebes recognized one 
only God, who bad had no beginning, and would have no end." 
Thus at least F. Lenormant asserts (Ancient History of the 
East, Tom. i., p. 318). 

Sir George Rawlinson is so much convinced of this, that he 
thinks it is from the primitive belief of Egypt tbat most Greek 



238 



GENTILISM. 



philosophers of the ancient school admitted real Unity in Di- 
vine Nature, although their mythology soon divided it into 
several manifestations, from which polytheism sprung. As the 
words of so learned a man carry a great weight with them, we 
quote from his second volume of Herodotus (Appleton's edi- 
tion), p. 219 : 

" The philosophical view taken by the Greeks of the nature 
of the Deity was different from their mythological system. . . . 
Directly they began to adopt the inquiry into the nature of 
the Deity ; they admitted that He must be One Supreme ; and 
He received whatever name appeared to convey the clearest 
.notion of the First Principle. How far any of their notions, 
or at least the inquiry that led to them, may be traced to an 
acquaintance with Egyptian speculation, it is difficult to deter- 
mine; Thales and many more philosophers studied in Egypt, 
and must have begim, or have sought to promote, their inquiry 
during their visit to the learned people of that age ; and in 
justice to them, we must admit that they went to study there 
for some purpose. At all events, their early thoughts could 
not but have been greatly influenced by an intercourse with 
-Egypt? though many a succeeding philosopher suggested some 
new view of the First Cause ; speculation taking a varied range, 
and often returning under different names to a similar conclu- 
• sion." 

We shall, however, later on, show that an acquaintance with 
the primitive doctrine of Egypt was not the only, nor perhaps 
the greatest, cause of the monotheistic views of many Hellenist 
Sages. But the reflections of the learned editor of " Herodotus," 
are certainly true, and remarkably appropriate to our subject. 

In conclusion, we cannot do better than quote a somewhat 
long but very important passage of Mr. Marietta in his " No- 
tice du Musee de Boulaq," p. 15 and sq., in which we shall 
find a natural transition to the period of decline in truth and 
introduction of error in Egypt : 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



239 



" The almost infinite variety of types presented by the 
Egyptian pantheon, is a fact known to everybody. It would 
be wrong, however, to draw from this the conclusion that the 
Egyptian religion was never anything but a tissue of gross and 
ridiculous fables. ..... Had its only basis been composed of 

the strange superstitions practised in that country, it could not 
have run the splendid career of its history. . . . Such a shame- 
less religion would have contained a germ of death, rather than 
the active principles of life which gave such a high position in 
the world's history to the old Egyptian civilization. Recent 
discoverias in the art of reading hieroglyphic inscriptions have 
confirmed these views. 

"At the head of the Egyptian pantheon appears a God, one, 
immortal, uncreated, invisible, and hidden in the unapproach- 
able depths of His essence. He is the creator of heaven and 
earth ; He has made everything that exists, and nothing has 
been made without Him. But He is the God reserved only to 
the initiated. 

" Egypt, however, did not know how, or did not wish, to 
stop at so immense a height. She came down to consider the 
world, its formation, the principles by which it is governed, 
man and Ms destiny on earth, as an immense drama." (We 
shall speak later on of the fable of Osiris.) " The Being of 
beings is the only actor in it ; everything comes from Him, 
and must return to Him. He is served, it is true, by agents ; 
but these are His own personified attributes, and these become 
finally so many gods under visible forms, inferior gods, limited 
in their actions, although participating in all His essential char- 
acteristics 

" Behind those altars loaded with the images of deities, 
apparently so strange, Egypt, therefore, concealed serious dog- 
mas. And thus it can be easily understood that if the Egyp- 
tian religion has lasted so long a time, it was because it rested, 
originally on a theology not altogether unworthy of the name." 



240 



GENTILISM. 



VI. 

These revelations of the great explorer of Egyptian antiquities 
bring us naturally to consider the first downward steps towards 
error in Egypt, as we have already done as regards Hindostan. 
And the result is again a rapid fall to the pantheism described 
by the Book of Wisdom. A text quoted previously iu support 
of Egyptian monotheism, under a mistake, certainly, by Mr.de 
Rouge, expresses the doctrine clearly but crudely : " The idea 
of God is offered under two aspects : the father and the son ; 
he is a double being engendering himself ; the soul in twins." 
In this passage, and many others of the kind, the father is 
God and the son is the World. The world, as expressed by 
Plato in his " Timoeus," is " the only-begotten Son of God." 
Both, therefore, are identified, and the most rigid pantheism is 
at once introduced as a religious dogma. 

To give it a stronger hold on the Egyptian mind, both the 
texts on papyri and on monuments represent, in many different 
forms, the "principal god of the temples" engendering him- 
self in the bosom of his mother. The god becomes, conse- 
quently, his own father and his own son, the mother contrib- 
uting nothing in that system, but being altogether passive, as 
Diodorus asserts (Lib. L, 80). Thus there is the most complete 
identity between God and ihe world ; and the Egyptian will 
be able, henceforth, to worship the sun, and the moon, and 
the winds, and the Nile, and the trees as real gods. The Book 
of "Wisdom has, in fact, related only what really took place. 
Mr. Mariette says, with justice, that this " double god " is " the 
one whose image the Egyptians saw everywhere repeated on 
the walls of sacred edifices." 

It is not probable, nay, it does not seem possible, that pan- 
theistic error should have reached at once such an extreme 
limit. It came on gradually, we may well suppose. And as in 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFEICA. 



241 



the Yedic upanishads sublime trutlis were often nobly ex- 
pressed, with, some incidental phrases introducing the fatal 
formulas, the same must have taken place in Egypt. 

St. J ustin Martyr, in his " Cohortatio ad Grascos," says of 
some author, whose name now escapes us : Amnion Dewn 
prorsus occultum nominat ,' Hermes vero dare et manifeste 
dicit : Deurn intelligentia comprehendere, difficile est • eloqui 
antem impossibileP 

There is nothing here to which the strictest orthodoxy can 
object. Any Christian philosopher of our days will say, like- 
wise, that God is truly " hidden " from us ; and that if it is 
hard for our intellect to understand Him, it is really impos- 
sible for our tongue to express His nature. 

But Iamblichus, in his book, " De Mysteriis Egyptiorum," 
stating briefly the answer of Anebon to Porphyry, no longer 
now in existence, gives a definition of God which any Catholic 
theologian could adopt, if it were not marred by some dubious 
expressions. God is declared to be " totius naturoz et genera- 
tionis potestatumque elementarium, Causa. . . . immaterialis, 
mcorporeus, ingenitus, indwisus, totus a seipso, et in seipso 
absconditus, .... etc.'' It seems as if we were reading some 
of the scholastic theologians. But doubt begins to be awakened 
when we read : " Universa in se complectvtur" and '' sequeipse 
omnibus mundi partibus communieat." We cannot forbear 
pointing out 'this close resemblance of ancient Egyptian lore 
with the Hindoo Vedas. It is again the universal soul perme- 
ating creation. 

The error is yet more clearly expressed in a passage taken 
from the dialogue "Asclepius" — in Greek, 6 re^eiog \byo<;— 
misunderstood by Lactantius and St. Augustine. We quote 
from the late Edinburgh translation of the Ante-Nicene 
Fathers : " Hermes, in the book which is entitled The Perfect 
Word, made use of these words : ' The Lord and Creator of 
all things we have thought right to call God, since he made 



242 



GENTILISM. 



the Second God visible and sensible Since, therefore, 

He made Ilirn first, and alone, and one only, He appeared to 
Him beautiful, and most full of all good things ; and He hal- 
lowed Him, and altogether loved Him as His own Son.' " 
Lactantius and St. Augustine understood this of the Logos, 
Son of God ; but Hermes meant to speak of the created World, 
and thus made the exterior creation a second and visible God, 
the first after the Supreme One. It is evidently that double 
god engendering himself, whom Mr. Mariette declares is repre- 
sented everywhere on tbe monuments. 

Likewise in one of the " Christian " Hermetic books — the 
Poemander — it is first stated that " the First God is the eternal 
architect of all things, made by no one ;" but directly after, 
the writer adds : " The Second God is the one which has been 
made in the image of the First, contained in It, loved, nour- 
ished, and rendered immortal by its Father." The visible 
world, therefore, is declared to be the Son of God, immortal 
likewise, and true God. This was also a Hindoo doctrine, 
which marks distinctly the passage from monotheism to pan- 
theism. 

It seems that in Egypt this occurred sooner than in Hin- 
dostan, as the Egyptians appear to have been more prone to 
idolatry than the Hindoos. But it is not a* little remarkable 
that the same process of error shows itself in both countries 
at a veiy remote age ; for this alteration of the primitive doc- 
trine must have happened before any of the monuments still 
existing in Hindostan or Egypt were built. Certainly, at the 
time this was first written, nothing of the absurd mythology 
sculptured at length on the oldest edifices, had been yet imag- 
ined to please the vnlgar. 

The coincidences between the Hindoo and Egyptian relig- 
ions are so remarkable, that we wonder indeed they have not 
yet been fully pointed out. It is true the most important dis- 
coveries in Yedic lore date only from a few years ago ; and 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



243 



Egyptology progressing apart, no extensive comparison of both 
could yet have taken place. A most interesting volume, we 
think, could be written on the subject ; and as the Hindoo dis- 
coveries are admitted to be positive, we may say clear and final, 
the light thrown thereby on what is yet obscure in Egypt 
would, in our opinion, take away from modern writers the pre- 
text that, for the country of the Pharaohs the old classics are 
" unreliable." Thus, who will not wonder that in the " Poem- 
ander " God is twice declared dppsvodrjXvg — hermaphrodite. 
Cud worth, who lived in an age very little acquainted yet with 
Indian theology, says on the subject : " Hoc, ni fallor, ^Egyp- 
tium est." He might as well have said : " This is purely 
Vedic," and we know that error penetrated first the mind of 
the Brahmins when they imagined Brahma (male). . The same, 
namely, the hermaphroditism of Amun, is asserted also in the 
dialogue, " Asclepius," one of the ISTeoplatonist Hermetic 
books. 

In the eleventh and twelfth chapters of the Poemander, the 
doctrine of transmigration first appears, and the destruction 
and renovation of the world is likewise broached. We know 
that these doctrines, specially the first, received in Egypt great 
later developments. And thus this country walked in the foot- 
steps of India ; where, nevertheless, the superior imagination 
and poetical feeling of the nation made of those two extraor- 
dinary beliefs, such a fantastic system of dreams that the like 
never could happen in any other country on earth ; so that 
Egypt could never keep pace with it. 

Pantheism in Hindostan originated chiefly first from the 
doctrine of " universal soul," or God animating the world ; and, 
secondly, from the ritual and " Sacrificial rites ;" and the pro- 
cess is rendered now manifest by all the recent researches 
which have brought to light so many texts descriptive of it. 
The Egyptian ritual is lost ; yet we possess ancient texts, which 
show clearly that the passage to pantheism must have hap- 



2U 



GENTILISM. 



pened precisely in the same manner. We shall speak again 
later on of the " Book of Funereal Bites," lately discovered. 

A passage of the book of Hermes {nepi rd yevwa), preserved 
in the Chronicle of Eusebius, and referred to by Lactantius 
(Divin. Inst., L. ii., C. 15), says clearly : " INTonne audivisti 
"nines animos ab uno lmjus TJniversitatis animo profectos 
esse ?" — " Did you not hear that all souls proceed from the soul 
of this Universe ?" 

Many, it is time, object yet to those texts of books puhlished 
either by JSTeoplatonist philosophers, or by Christians, under the 
name of Hermes, as expressing merely the doctrines of the 
translators and publishers. The reader will remember what 
was stated previously on the subject. It is certain that authors 
such as St. Cyprian, Lactantius, St. Augustine, St. Cyril of 
Alexandria, and many Christian' writers of the time, as on the 
other side, Porphyry, lamblichus, Proclus, etc., admitted their 
genuineness, and no one at the time rejected them as unworthy 
of credit. All that was said in opposition was confined to this 
observation : " They were not the very text of Hermes ;" but 
all agreed that they expressed well the sentiments of Hermes, 
ipjiaiKug S6$a<; ; it is all we claim ; but every one will admit 
now that the " sentiment " expressed above is altogether Hin- 
doo, and reflects perfectly the doctrine developed with such a 
superabundance of details in all the commentaries of the Yedas, 
after the East had passed from the pure original monotheism 
to the pantheism which followed. 

And the following text " on creation" is so completely 
Brahm'nic, that we wonder it has hitherto escaped observation. 
It is taken from the dialogue, " Asclepius :" "Hie ergo qui solus 
est omnia, utriusque sexus fecunditate plenissimus, semper 
voluntatis suos prcegnans, parit semper quid quid voluerit pro- 
creareP We do not think that any Neoplatonist philosopher 
would ever have spoken with this crudity, although their doc- 
trine may, in the end, have come to this. The very words 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFEICA. 



245 



indicate something Egyptian, as Cndworth would say ; some- 
thing Hindoo, as we would express ourselves. We are fully 
persuaded that it came in truth from the original Hermetic 
books; and in our conviction, if those old productions of 
" Thoth " had been preserved, we should have in them a true 
counterpart of the Atharvan-Veda. 

Was India, then, the source of the religion, art, and civiliza- 
tion of Egypt or the reverse ? 

In both countries strict castes existed, and, originally, the 
same four in each : priests, warriors, merchants, artisans. The 
priest caste in Africa bore certainly a great resemblance to the 
Brahminical caste in Hindostan. Both had a great power over 
the kings, yet did not take an avowed part in the government 
of the country. Both had to study the sacred books : in India 
the Yedas ; in Egypt the Hermetic writings. The every-day 
occupations of each were almost the same, as well as the relig- 
ious ceremonies at which they presided — the processions, the 
sacrifices, the daily ablutions, the ritual, in fact, with all its 
numerous and perplexing details. The temples and other edi- 
fices devoted to religion had so many traits in common that 
when, at the beginning of this century, some Sepoy regiments 
were sent to Egypt by the British Government against the 
Erench, the Hindoo Sepoys fell down prostrate, and worship- 
ped their gods in the colossal statues they saw at Thebes. 

The military caste of Egypt was almost the exact reproduc- 
tion of that of Hindostan. Neither were remarkable for their 
fighting qualities ; once only did the Egyptian armies invade 
foreign countries ; which was under Sesostris. And when the 
country itself was invaded, it nearly always succumbed. Thus 
the Ethiopians, the Uyksos, the Persians, the Macedonians, and 
the Romans, subdued Egypt successively, almost without any 
resistance. It was the same with India. 

In the merchant caste we see likewise a great similarity. 
The people in both were more agriculturists than traders. 



246 



GENTILISM. 



They had no great fondness foi' the sea. To trade abroad, the 
Egyptians used, first, the vessels of the Phoenicians, and after- 
wards those of the Greeks. The Indians employed for the 
same purpose the merchant fleets of Arabia. 

Yet was the character of the Egyptian people of a very dif- 
ferent type from that of the Hindoos. There was in the latter 
an exuberance of fancy, of poetry, of enthusiasm, which were 
quite wanting in the Egyptians. The literature of the latter, 
so meagre at all times, exhibits to us in the few fragments we 
still possess a low, material, realistic feeling altogether the re- 
verse of the aesthetic ardor of the literature of India. When we 
read the explanation of myths communicated by the priests to 
Herodotus, whenever the honest Greek writer forgets the 
promise of secrecy he had given, and makes his revelations in 
spite of his fears of offending " gods and heroes," we wonder 
at the triviality, sometimes even the vulgarity of style, thought, 
and expression. We cannot imagine a Hindoo Brahmin, in 
such circumstances, exhibiting such a total want of noble feel- 
ings, or giving so mean a conception of his religion to a 
foreigner. "Whoever has read anything of Sanscrit literature, 
even in the poorest translations, cannot possibly admit the 
smallest resemblance between the two peoples, in mental con- 
stitution at least. 

Yet an ingenious writer, Mr. E, Pococke, attempts to dem- 
onstrate that Egypt was altogether colonized by Hindoos ; and 
that the Egyptians came, in fact, directly from the country 
about the mouths of the Indus. In the fourteenth chapter of 
his book, " India in Greece," he argues that Egypt in general 
— in Greek, Ai-gup-tia — derives its name from " n' Ai-go 
pati," a term at once revealing their original land, and the 
object of their worship. They are settlers from the same land 
with the " Horse Teip.es," most of whom are Children of the 
Sun, and worshippers of Gopati, a term which at once signi- 
fies " the Sun," " the Bull," and " Siva." Hence their desig- 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



247 



nation as " Hyas of the Solar Race," or " H'ai-Goptai." These 
" Horse Tribes " come, he says, from the Gulf of Cush, near 
the mouths of the Indus. 

In the same manner he endeavors to prove that the Ethio- 
pians are " Cnshites," as applied in Hindostan to the u Aitio- 
Pas, or " Chiefs of Oude ;" that the Abyssinians and Nubians 
came originally from " Abxta-Sin," or the Indus, and the river 
Nubra. This is, indeed, a mere etymological argument t:> 
which no sound scholar in our days attach much importance. 
But Mr. Pococke groups around it such an array of facts, of 
texts, of historical, geographical, and ethnographical details, 
that he almost contrives to "surround his speculations with an 
air of such plausibility as to resemble at times demonstration. 

But unfortunately for his theory, the whole of it hangs on 
Buddhism. The boot itself is an apparently serious argument 
to prove that not only Egypt, Ethiopia, and the interior of 
Africa, but likewise Palestine, Syria, Greece, Etruria, the 
North of Europe even, at least Scandinavia, were all settled 
by Buddhist tribes. His excess of zeal has carried Mr. E. 
Pococke too far. A few years after the publication of his very 
erudite and interesting book, Mr. E. Burnouf demonstrated 
that Buddhism is of a comparatively recent origin ; and, con- 
sequently, that Egypt, of which alone we now treat, had been 
settled long before Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, ap- 
peared. 

Such a mass of erudition, however, as is displayed in " India 
in Greece," must not be supposed to be on the whole barren of 
result. It quite establishes the fact that Egypt had from the 
beginning close and constant intercourse with Hindostan ; that 
any resemblance between the two peoples is perceptible, chiefly, 
in the most remote ages ; and that such rememblance displays 
itself most conspicuously in the similarity of their public build- 
ings. " A striking analogy," he writes, " will be found to 
exist between the rock architecture of both countries ; the grot- 



248 



GEETILISM. 



toes of Salsette, Elephantina, and Ellore, remind us strongly of 
the excavations in Egypt and Nubia, of tbe royal tombs at 
Thebes, and the splendid monument rescued from the sand 
and restored to the light of day by Belzoni, at Ipsambul." 

Lord Yalentia was struck by the identity of character in the 
monuments of both countries, although few of them compara- 
tively were known in his time. But here the question naturally 
presents itself, Did Egypt receive its civilization from India, 
or India from Egypt ? To maintain the latter, we must sup- 
pose that in Hindostan civilization travelled from the South 
Northward, as the Egyptians could not then reach India except 
from the South. And it is demonstrated that the contrary was 
'the case. We have seen, in a previous chapter, that Brahmin- 
ism originated in the northwest of the Peninsula, and all the 
late discoveries go to prove that the Himalaya mountains, and 
along their range, probably Cashmere, was the starting-point 
of the intellectual movement. " In the heart of these moun- 
tains," says, again, Mr. E. Pococke (rpioting Lemp., Barker's 
edit., "Meroe,") "are found the residences of the earlier Brah- 
mins, and the more ancient temples of their gods. At the con- 
fluence of the two arms of the Ganges, rises the holy city De- 
vaprajaga, 30°, 8' lat., inhabited only by Brahmins ; further on 
is seen the temple of Badri-Nuth, said to be extremely rich, 
and to possess as its domains more than seven hundred flour- 
ishing villages, placed in a state of dependence on the high 
priest of the temple .... 

u The most ancient poems of India represent the countries 
of the Ganges as the cradle of those heroes, who afterwards 
carried their arms in the southern regions as far as Ceylon. 
Everything, in a word, tends to show most clearly that civiliza- 
tion followed in India a route diametrically opposite to the 
one which it pursued in Egypt, where the Social movement 
was from the South to the North." 

Colonel Todd, on the contrary (Kajastan, vol. i., p. 250), 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



249 



remarks that, " The allegory of Chrishna' s eagle pursuing the 
serpent (Buddha), and recovering the books of science and re- 
ligion with which he had fled, is an important historical fact 
disguised .... The gulf of Cash (at the mouth of the Indus), 
the point where the serpent attempted to escape, has been from 
time immemorial to the present day, the entrepot for the com- 
merce (of India) with Sofala, the Red Sea, Egypt, and Arabia. 
There Buddha Trivicrama, or Mercury (Thoth), has been, and 
yet is, invoked by the pirates of Dwarica. Did Buddha, or 
Mercury (Thoth), come from or escape to the Nile ? Is he the 
Hermes of Egypt, to whom the four books of science, the 
Yedas of the Hindoos, were sacred ? The representative of 
Buddha, at the period of Chrishna, was ISTema-Nath ; he is of a 
black complexion (As. trans., v. ii., p. 304), and his statues ex- 
actly resemble in features the bust of young Memnon. His 
symbol was the snake. I have already observed that Chrishna, 
before his deification, worshipped Buddha ; and his temple at 
Dwarica rose over the ancient shrine of the latter, which yet 
stands. In an inscription from the cave of Gaya, then' charac- 
ters are conjoined, 'Heri, who is Buddha.' " 

If these conjectures of Col. Todd be correct, as we believe 
them to be, to a certain extent, the colonization of Egypt took 
place from India ; and even it was through the gulf of Cush, 
or from the mouth of the Indus River. It is now generally 
admitted that Syria and Mesopotamia were the real channel of 
immigration. Yet this passage is of extreme importance ; and 
shows that the Hindoos, at the time of the writing of the Pu- 
ranas, were persuaded that the Yedas had been taken to the 
South by Mercury (Thoth). And if the attempt at first failed, 
according to the poet, they must have succeeded later, since 
the Hermetic books existed afterwards in Egypt. If Buddha — a 
much more recent personage— appears in the poem, the reason 
is that Buddhism existed at the time when the Puranas were 
composed, and was in conflict with Brahminism ; and the de- 



250 



GENTILISM. 



fender of this last system of religion, the poet who wrote the 
history of Chrishna and Rama, was not absolutely obliged 
to write quite correctly of what happened so long before him. 

VII. 

From the pantheism which is the logical deduction from a 
belief in the " Universal Soul," we proceed to a short investiga- 
tion of the "worship of elements," which is the natural con- 
sequence of it, and which the Book of "Wisdom has told us is 
the first form idolatry took everywhere among men. 

"We shall be satisfied, on this subject, with a very remarkable 
pa—, i-v nf ['orpin i'\ , taken from his " Epistola ad Anohonem." 
lie wants to know how far Chseremon was right, or if he was 
not altogether wrong, in attributing to the Egyptians a very 
gross and material belief in visible gods, namely : " The Planets, 
the signs of the Zodiac, the Stars, etc." Chaeremon insisted that 
even the oldest writings on theology in Egypt, consequently 
the books of Hermes, did not acknowledge any other gods but 
these ; and he added : " That those who believed the Sun to be 
the real architect of the universe, corroborated their arguments 
by what is said of Osiris and Isis ; that all the sacred fables re- 
solve themselves in the various aspects of the stars, in their oc- 
cultations and wanderings, even in the Nile and its overflow- 
ings, finally in nothing but physical things, material altogether, 
without any need of a spiritual principle altogether." 

Our readers perceive that the arguments of atheists are not 
recent. But it is clear that this followed logically from the 
doctrine of the " Universal Soul." Everything was divine ; 
and we have only to look on the " visible god " — the world — 
without caring for the " invisible one " — Amun. In Hindo- 
6tan, also, as soon as the " eternal, infinite, self-existent Braluna," 
falling asleep, had generated from himself another Brahma, 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



251 



with a particular sex and visible attributes, the first god, too 
indistinct and "undefined" for popular worship, gradually 
ceased to attract the attention of the worshipper, and all hom- 
ages and adorations were reserved for what the senses could 
perceive. 

Hence the elements, the " forces of nature," to speak as men 
do in our age, became the objects of the exclusive worship of 
the Egyptians ; and the belief began to spread among some of 
the Greeks, and was adopted by a few Christian ecclesiastical 
writers, that the inhabitants of that country never had any 
other gods than " the stars of heaven either fixed or erratic ;" 
that the " esoteric doctrines, even of the priests, did not ac- 
knowledge any invisible and spiritual Creator, but that every- 
thing ought to be attributed to the visible sun, the centre of 
the world." This renders at least the sense of Eusebius in the 
" Preparatio Evangelica " (L. hi., cap. 4), and he concluded 
from it : " Tou know now the mysteries of that divine wisdom 
which brought finally the Egyptians to worship wolves, dogs, 
and lions." 

Eusebius was right in asserting that the worship of Nature 
was the cause which gradually introduced into Egypt animal- 
worship. But if he pretended that the object of adoration was 
only the visible universe, without any reference to a " spiritual 
principle," he was evidently wrong. The error of the Egyp- 
tians consisted precisely in this : that they imagined the " Uni- 
versal Soul" — Amun — to be portioned out and divided, as it 
were, into as many distinct particles as there were living beings, 
and thus each one of them was animated by a parcel of divinity. 
It was, therefore, not only a " spiritual" but a " divine" being 
they worshipped when they addressed their homages to the 
sun, the stars, the planets, the Mle, etc. Pantheism, for them, 
had become the origin of idolatry by offering to their adoration 
the " works of God," instead of " God himself." But their 
worship was directed, that of the enlightened among them, at 



252 



GENTILISM. 



least, to the " spiritual principle " animating Nature. Tlie 
same was likewise clearly the case in Hindostan ; as the " Book 
of "Wisdom " has it, " they imagined, either the fire or the 
wind, or the swift air, or the circles of the stars, or the great 
waters, or the sun and moon, to be the gods that rule the 
world." 

A.S the monuments of the eigthteenth dynasty are those on 
which Amun-Pa first appears, it seems probable that this was 
the epoch of the introduction of real idolatry, as subsequent to, 
and caused by, Pantheism. The god is usually represented 
under the form of a man with a high head-dress, on which is 
sculptured the globe of the sun. Hence the Egyptian word 
Amun-Ra was translated by the Greeks into TttXiog, very dif- 
ferent from Ajijiwv. The ram's horns which became in time 
the distinguishing mark of Amun, do not appear when the 
god is represented as the sun. The precise epoch when those 
various emblems were introduced into Egyptian mythology 
cannot now be determined. If some future Egyptologist, by 
.nterpreting aright and in detail the existing monuments, could 
state positively those diverse steps of Egyptian imagination 
and systematic polytheism, the whole secret of the progress 
of error in the land of the Pharaohs would be revealed, and 
a true history of superstition in that country might be written. 

We cannot, however, be much mistaken when we state, that 
the eighteenth dynasty was the period when idolatry took a 
sudden and highly-developed form. It was at the same time 
the epoch of the greatest material civilization of Egypt ; and 
we have already had occasion to remark that the same took 
place in Hindostan and Greece. In Egypt, nevertheless, an 
element is, or appears to be, wanting, which is most pre-emi- 
nent in the two other countries. We hear in Thebes and 
Memphis of no great poems to which the origin of the names 
of the gods could be ascribed as those of the Hellenic deities 
weie to the poems of Homer and Hesiod by Herodotus ; and 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



253 



as the avatars of Vishnu, ai d the legends of Earna and Krish- 
na, in Hindostan, to the great Indian epics, the JRamayana and 
Mahahharata. Had the Egyptians any poetry ? Did they 
possess any epic poems ? Was music and the other fine arts 
cultivated by them ? This last question may be answered 
affirmatively, as we know their musical instruments, and we 
have still models of their sculpture and painting. It is only 
very lately that any writing has been found which can be called 
poetry, such as we understand the word ; but certainly no ex- 
tensive work of the epic kind has been not only preserved, but 
even mentioned in all the Egyptian lore now in existence, 
unless it be " poems in prose." We may, however, state most 
positively that they must have had such poems ; and, first, we 
cannot suppose music in antiquity except as an accompaniment 
to versification. We know, moreover, that the Egyptians had 
songs ; among the priestly officers mentioned by St. Clement 
of Alexandria, the " Singer" was the first, walking at the head 
of the procession ; and his chief office was to learn by heart the 
" hymns to the gods," and sing them. Can we suppose a 
" hymn " in ancient times except in verse and with rythm ? 

The main question, however, is to know if the Egyptians 
had really poems of an epic kind, out of which an intricate 
mythology could grow. None ccrt.iinly have been preserved, 
and none are alluded to in any ancient author. But we are 
acquainted with the history of several of their gods. Those of 
Osiris, Isis, Horns, and Typhon are especially known in all 
their details, made out of many bits of information contained 
here and there in Greek and Latin works. These histories are 
certainly fictitious ; and we cannot admit fiction in ancient 
times except under the form of a poem. iSTovels were un- 
known, and the subject was too sacred for the Egyptians to be 
treated^ as a mere novel, in the modern acceptance of the term. 
We have no doubt, consequently, that the history of Osiris 
and Isis was first enunciated in a poem of the form of the 



254 



GENTILISM. 



Ramayiina among the Hindoos. The original work lias per- 
ished ; we have only a few fragments, contained in more recent 
authors, yet so that a complete fabulous history has been recom- 
posed, and is known now as the myth of Osiris. 

We find, therefore, in Egypt, at least by indirect conclu- 
sions, the phenomenon so striking in India and Greece. The 
poets of Memphis and Thebes originated a mythology best 
known now by the astonishing sculptures which still exist, 
chiefly in the ruins of Thebes, Luxor, Philce, Elephantine, 
and all over Nubia and Ethiopia. Their imagination created 
those monsters which strike the traveller in Egypt as in Tlin- 
dostan ; and there is a remarkable fact in both countries, which 
establishes a wonderful difference between them and Greece : 
The gods are found in groups, never singly. Amun-Ea is 
always surrounded by his kindred deities, as Osiris, and Phtah, 
and all the others by theirs. Each temple represents, conse- 
quently, a different fabulous history, which must have origi- 
nated from a different poem ; not so in Greece, where each 
god or goddess alone enjoys the monopoly of the temples con- 
secrated to each. 

There is, moreover, another resemblance in this respect be- 
tween India and Egypt worthy of note. It is that each prin- 
cipal god is always accompanied with a goddess, called, by the 
vulgar, his wife, but, in reality, his " female energy," as we 
remarked in LTindostan, in the case of Siva, in particular. The 
original hermaphroditism of the Godhead is replaced by a dis- 
tinction of sexes for each deity ; and we already know how 
immorality and monstrosity have spread, which sprung origi- 
nally from this .strange fancy of primitive poets and artists. 
Thus Phtah, or Yulcan, at Memphis, is never seen alone ; but 
the monstrous goddesses Pasht and Bast keep always attend- 
ance on him ; Knum, worshipped at Elephantine, is in company 
with Heka, or Anuka ; Amun-Pa, or Helios, cannot appear 
without Mu, the " Mother ;" Osiris and Isis are well known. But 



CENTRAL ASIA AKD AFRICA. 



255 



we have no occasion to eater into the detail of all the Egyptian 
mythology. These few instances will suffice. It is difficult, 
however, not to see an identity of origin in a mythological 
idea of this kind existing at the same time both in India and 
Egypt. 

A very striking peculiarity of this last country, however, is 
the local character of these gods, restricted, except in the case 
of a few, to a comparatively small territory ; a local character 
whence, probably, animal-worship took a much greater preemi- 
nence in Egypt than in India. It is well known that except 
the worship of Amun (simpliciter), and that of Osiris and Isis, 
which was universal throughout the whole extent of the coun- 
try, the other gods of Egyptian mythology were honored only 
in particular cities or districts ; and this took place in groups, 
as each individual chief deity had always a number of invari- 
able companions whose statues were worshipped with the prin- 
cipal one. Thus there must have been a special fabulous his- 
tory connected with each group, which fact, in our opinion, 
supposed originally a poem, or, at least, some tradition in verse, 
poetry being invariably the religious language of ancient 
times. We have observed a #imilar fact in India, but not to 
the same extent. 

Thus religion — although it had everywhere in this country 
the same character, which one invariably recognizes by its 
Egyptian look — was, in fact, divided to an incredible extent 
into individual deities for individual towns and villages. In 
Egypt, therefore, not only was the religion a national one — for 
idolatry made it national everywhere, instead of universal, as it 
was at first — but it became truly an institution of townships ; 
and this was carried to extreme by animal-worship. 

The doctrine of all living beings partaking of a spark of the 

universal fire, or rather of a divine parcel of the " Universal 

Soul," gave to all objects a strangely superstitious character. 

The attention of Egyptians had been very early attracted by 
18 



256 



GENTILISIM. 



the peculiar habits of the few animals indigenous in the coun- 
try ; for the territory is not extensive, only a narrow belt of 
four or five miles on both banks of the JSTile, and it is 
covered with water for several months every year. Particular 
places being benefited by the presence of some animals, these 
were divinized ; other localities being plagued and cursed by 
the presence of some others, these were treated as enemies. 
And it frequently happened that the animabgod of a city was 
looked upon with horror by the next one along the river. 
And from this cause arose frequent quarrels, mutual insults, 
even wars between contiguous localities. To such an extent 
of absurdity, odiousness, and barbarism had religion — if thus 
it must be called — been debased by the introduction of 
idolatry. 

But this state of religious disintegration, if we may call it 
so, supposed a previous disintegration of the country. This 
phenomenon has been remarked of other regions, but of India 
in particular ; and our proposition, that " evidently mankind 
began by clanship," has an especial applicability to Egypt. Ac- 
cording to the general idea, it is supposed to have fonned a 
compact kingdom, rising occasionally to the proportions of a 
mighty Empire, as it did under Sesostris ; and as we, in mod- 
ern times, are accustomed to see large nationalities existing 
with a high state of centralization, under the sway of one 
strong and ever-present administration, we are prone to con- 
clude, hastily, that it has always been so, and that Egypt, in 
particular, was a powerful State, whose parts were firmly knit 
together by religion, civilization, and customs. But this is 
nothing but a huge mistake. There never was in Egypt such 
a social and re^Lious compactness before the Ptolemies, and 
after them the Pomans. And, even in this last case, the unifi- 
cation was rather one of administration than of social customs. 

It is certain that under the Pharaohs, and long after, Egypt 
was parcelled out into a great number of small districts called 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



257 



" nomes." Learned men differ as to the precise meaning of 
this word ; some deriving it from the Greek vonog, different 
from vb\xoq ; others thinking, with more probability, that it was 
originally an Egyptian, or perhaps a Phoenician, expression. 
It meant a territory "of any size, small generally, around a city 
or village. The same word was used by the author of the 
Book of Maccabees (I Lib., cap. x., v. 30), for certain small dis 
tricts in Samaria and Galilee, called cities in the Douai ver- 
sion ; and by Herodotus (in Thai.) for Persian Satrapies in 
general. Isaiah (cap. xix., v. 2) employs a word generally trans- 
lated by kingdom, and which the Sept. expresses by vo\ibq ; and 
this last text being precisely adapted to our present consider- 
ations, we give it here : " I will set the Egyptians against the 
Egyptians ; and they shall fight brother against brother, and 
friend against friend, city against city, kingdom against king- 
dom." This last expression translated by vo^og in the Sept., 
is very remai^kable. 

J. J. Hoffmann, in his " Lexicon Universale," gives a list of 
sixty-five nomes into which Egypt was divided. Pliny the 
Elder, having always before his eyes the Roman Empire, calls 
them Prcefecturas, giving us to understand that they were 
merely provinces of a centralized government. But from what 
we have just quoted from the Book of Maccabees and from 
Isaiah, it would appear that decentralization was rather included 
in the meaning of the word " nome." The question so often 
raised on the dynasties of Manetho has an important bearing 
on this part of our subject. Those who contended last century 
for the immense period of time required, apparently, by the 
only chronology of Egyptian history we possess, maintained, 
of course, that the dynasties of Manetho were all successive. 
But, although Egyptologists seem to have now adopted this 
opinion, there are very good reasons for supposing that a cer- 
tain number at least of those dynasties were simultaneous ; and 
that, for a long time, Egypt was, in fact, a kind of " pentarchy," 



258 



GENTILISM. 



or something of the kind. Bawlinson shows it perfectly well 
in his "Herodotus." The virulence with which, as it is now 
ascertained, "nome" frequently fought against-" nome," or as 
Isaiah says, "kingdom against kingdom," proves clearly like- 
wise that to consider Egypt as a compact commonwealth, ruled 
by the same laws, and under a centralized government, is alto- 
gether a mistake. "When the worshippers of the crocodile went 
forth in battle array against the adorers of the ichneumon — the 
destroyer of the reptile's eggs — we do riot read that the Pha- 
raoh of Memphis or of Thebes interfered, at least usually. It 
was a fight of clan against clan, and the supreme monarch did 
not think his authority required him to chastise the disturbers 
of the peace. Each one had a right to fight for the honor of 
his god. We see at a glance what must have been then the 
state of society. 

But there is, in Strabo, a short passage which supplies a very 
remarkable incidental confirmation of what we have just as- 
serted. In Book xi., ch. xi., § 5th, we read :. " When I was 
sailing up the Nile, schoeni — measures of distance — of different 
lengths were used in passing from one city to another, so that 
the same number of schoeni gave in some places a longer, in 
others a shorter, length of the voyage. This mode of compu- 
tation has been handed down from an early period, and is con- 
tinued to the present time." Strabo speaks of a fact to which 
he was himself a witness, and on which he could not be de- 
ceived. As his travelling in Egypt took place under Augustus, 
the whole ^country was cowed into submission, and strict laws, 
which the Bomans knew so well how to impose and execute, 
were in full vigor in Egypt, and forced it to be one and whole. 
Yet the intelligent observer was struck with a fact which he 
could not explain, having not deeply studied the early history 
of the country. The mile around Memphis was different from 
the mile around Thebes. And it must have been for any 
traveller a source of inextricable confusion, to have to adopt a 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



259 



new measure of distance every time lie passed " from one city 
to another." It was the confusion which existed not long ago 
in Germany, with respect to coin and money, and which the 
French have had themselves so much trouble to remedy in 
their own country by their modern decimal system for all quan- 
tities. Formerly France, Germany, Italy, etc. ; much more, in 
old times, Egypt, India, etc., were partitioned out into an im- 
mense number of " small states," each having its own measures 
of distance, of weight, of bulk, etc. Are they not yet to-day in 
Spain fighting for the old system against the new and qnite re- 
cent one, of reducing large bodies of people to the same inflex- 
ible rules of what they call unification of races 1 Nothing is bet- 
ter calculated than this short passage of Strabo . to give to the 
common reader an idea of what Egypt must then have been, or 
rather of what the world then was ; for it is to be remarked that 
the whole geography of Strabo is merely a record of " tribes." 

Most of those who have written on ancient Egypt suppose 
that this strange superstition — animal - worship — existed from 
the most ancient times, and that it is, in fact, a part of the " pri- 
meval religion." Do they not still see it everywhere in Africa, 
from Ethiopia to Senegal ? What must have been its cause ? 
Unable to conjecture a satisfactory one, they assume that, in 
the "infancy of nations," men were "infants" probably, and 
amused themselves with those strange toys, cats, dogs, etc., and 
admiring, we suppose, their curious antics, they believed them 
animated by a " divine instinct" — divino instinetu. Thus were 
they led to divinize the vilest animals, such as serpents and 
crocodiles. We find hypotheses of this kind in very .thought- 
ful writers, for whom we entertain a real regard, and whom 
we would not for any consideration ridicule, or even treat with 
any kind of disrespect. Heeren of Grottingen is one of them. 

Our readers know what we think of the " infancy of na- 
tions ;" and many striking facts already related and commented 
upon in these pages, show how different the first period of hu- 



260 



GENTILISM. 



man society was from the barbarous degradation said to have 
existed in primitive times. Pleeren himself believes, and we 
honor him for it, that the first building erected by human 
hands was the " Tower of Babel," whose stupendous ruins, he 
think-, exist yet in our days; three high stories out of eight. 
Men, therefore, built then for eternity. The same celebrated 
writer has told us what he believes of the antiquity and the 
original civilization of Ethiopia, saying in as many words that, 
" History itself carries us back to those ages in which the for- 
mation of the most ancient States took place, and has thus far 
shown that Meroe was one of them." His most interesting 
historical works are full of many admissions of the kind ; and 
in very few modern productions of human literary industry 
shall we find so many arguments fatal to modern evolution- 
theorists. Yet he, too, speaks of the " infancy of nations," 
and of the childish admiration of man at that time for inferior 
animals ; an admiration going so far as to make them his gods 
and to worship them. And he calls such a degrading worship 
a part of the "primeval religion." When he wrote this he 
was not consistent with himself, and must have forgotten 
many splendid passages of a contrary purport which had come 
from his own pen, and which will give him an honorable and 
lasting place among the great writers of our day. And the 
only reason he assigns for attributing this origin to " animal- 
worship " is, that human reason cannot explain otherwise such 
an absurd freak of human superstition. That origin, we have 
showed, is sufficiently explamed by the pantheistic doctrines 
introduced in Hindostan and in Egypt from the belief in a 
' ; Universal Soul ;" an obvious corruption of the first doctrine 
of an Eternal, Infinite, Self-existent Being creating the world ; 
and thus supposed to have changed from invisible to visible. 
Animal-worship, consequently, derived from that great error, 
must have been long subsequent to the primitive times ; and 
the " primeval religion " must have known nothing of it. And 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



261 



although we have not ourselves seen any of the antique monu- 
ments of India, Egypt, and Ethiopia, we are sure that nothiug 
bearing testimony to this absurd and low belief can be fouud 
in any building claiming a right to be called really old. Ac- 
cording to the authors we have followed, we see at the cradle 
of African civilization, in the neighborhood of Meroe, monu- 
ments of a severe and noble style, with few sculptures and 
scarcely any hieroglyphs. Further on, in places farther north, 
on piles erected during the high material civilization of the 
eighteenth dynasty, we see the various histories of Osiris and 
Isis ; Phtah and Bast ; Knum and Heka ; Amun-Ra and Mif. 
On none of them do we find anything relating to animal-wor- 
ship, except, perhaps, here and there the presence of the ox 
Apis, a singular emblem, whose meaning was well known to 
all Egyptians. If anything is preserved on monuments of the 
worship of cats or dogs or crocodiles, they must have been 
built in the latter time of the Pharaohs, just before Cambyses 
came with his Persians to protest with indignation against such 
a degradation, to destroy the monuments and the priests, and 
to obtain from posterity the title of a mad man, because he 
could not overcome the wrath excited in him by such sights. 

The recent discoveries made by Mr. Mariette around Mem- 
phis are, in fact, a splendid confirmation of our thesis. Close 
by the great Sphinx at Gizeh, but certainly much more ancient, 
he found, buried in the sand of the desert, a vast temple en- 
tirely constructed of enormous blocks of black or rose-colored 
granite, and of Oriental alabaster, without any sculpture or even 
ornament of any hind. Straight lines alone, in the severest 
purity, were used in its decoration. 

But if the walls of this temple are deprived of sculptural 
ornaments, statues have been found in it which deserve a brief 
mention. They were certainly chiselled before the priestly 
" Canon of proportions " was imposed on Egyptian artists, 
consequently, at the very beginning of the nation. They are 



262 



GENTILISM. 



merely statues of kings or great men adorning their sepulchres. 
There is in them an elegance of composition, a simplicity and 
reality of movement, a life in all the figures, such as to con- 
vince the beholder that, if the priesthood had not imposed 
strict ritual rules, the beauty of Greek art, later by, perhaps, 
as much as fifteen centuries, would have been anticipated in 
Egypt. But nowhere could Mr. Mariette find in this temple 
any proofs of the subsequently degraded worship. 

In the " infancy of nations," therefore, at least in Egypt, 
not only was the human face that of a superior being, but even 
tfls life was that of a Hindoo rishi ; since, on the walls of 
those tombs of the primitive dynasties of the country, are 
represented all the scenes — domestic or agricultural — of a truly 
patriarchal condition; large and well-cultivated farms, numer- 
ous herds of cattle, fish and game in abundance, commodious 
hour's and villas, all the details of a most simple but truly civil- 
ized life. Not so a thousand years later. • 

Egypt was yet under the domination of the Persians when 
Herodotus visited it; and he has left us details of the stupid 
■veneration of the people for animals, which is simply astonish- 
ing, when we reflect on the progress the Egyptians had long 
before made in civilization. "When a conflagration," he 
relates (Euterpe, 66, 67), " takes place, a supernatural impulse 
seizes on the eats of the neighborhood. The Egyptians, stand- 
ing at a distance, think only of the cats, and neglect to put out 
the fire. Then the animals, making their escape, leap over the 
men and throw themselves into the fire. When this happens, 
great lamentations are made among the Egyptians. In what- 
ever house a cat dies of a natural death, all the family shave 
their eyebrows only ; but if a dog die, they shave the whole 
body and the head. All deceased cats are carried to certain 
sacred houses, where, being first embalmed, they are buried in 
the city of Bubastis. All persons bury their dogs in sacred 
vavdts within their own city ; and ichneumons are buried in the 



CENTEAL ASIA AND AFEICA. 



263 



same manner as the clogs ; but field-mice and hawks they carry 
to the city of Buto ; the ibis to Heimopolis ; the bears, which 
are few in nrfmber, and the wolves, which are not much larger 
than foxes, they bury wherever they are found lying." . 

Everybody knows how all these details have been verified 
by modern researches, and what enormous quantities of em- 
balmed cats, in particular, have been found in Egypt in this 
century. We cannot believe that the people who built the 
stupendous monuments of Thebes were so superstitious and 
so much addicted to animal-worship as those whom Herodotus 
has described from eyesight. It is, no doubt, much later than 
even the eighteenth or nineteenth dynasties that such scenes 
began to take place in Egypt. 

Yet already, long before the time of Herodotus, the progress 
of idolatry had introduced strange superstitions. A single 
example will suffice — an example w T hich will, at the same time, 
illustrate the old Egyptian exalted doctrine, and show how 
former noble traditions had been altogether forgotten in the 
midst of ever-advancing- degradation. We take it from He- 
rodot. II., 42 : " The Thebans, and those who, following their 
example, abstain from eating mutton, say that this custom was 
established among them in the following way : Hercules 
(Khonsu) was desirous of seeing Jupiter (Amun), but Jupiter 
was unwilling to be seen by him ; at last, however, as Hercules 
persisted, Jupiter had recourse to the following contrivance : 
Having flayed a ram, he cut off the head and held it before 
himself, and then having put on the fleece, he, in that form, 
showed himself to Hercules. From this circumstance the 
Egyptians make the image of Jupiter with a ram's head ; and 
from the Egyptians, the Ammonians (in Ethiopia), .... and, as 
I conjecture, the Ammonians from hence derived their name, 
for the Egyptians call Jupiter, Ammon (Amun)." 

It is evident from this narrative that the " Father of His- 
tory " attached no other meaning than the literal one to this 



264 



GENTILISM. 



apparently absurd tale ; and that all the Egyptians of his time, 
even the priests with whom he was in constant communication, 
saw no deeper meaning in it. And as the whole country was full 
of statues with rams' heads representing Amun, all the idea 
the people gathered from it was the altercation between Amun 
and Khonsu ; and, on that account, many of them abstained 
from eating mutton. Yet the fidl understanding of this myth 
is easy for us, and we find in it a strong confirmation of some 
of our previous observations on the monotheism of the first 
Egyptians : Jupiter, or Amun (simpliciter), is " invisible," 
" self-existent," the " highest," the " supreme." He cannot 
be seen — understood perfectly — by inferior gods, his creatures. 
Hercules (Khonsu) is one of the twelve gods of the second 
order, a cording to Herodotus in another passage (II. 43). 
lie (Khonsu) asks to see Amun, who cannot grant his request 
absolutely, but makes use of a " contrivance ;" He creates the 
"visible" world, chiefly the Sun, centre of it. This visible 
Amun begins his course every year, by the first sign of the 
Zodiac (Aries). It is known that the Egyptians were the first 
inventors of the Zodiac. Every year, therefore, when the 
inhabitant of Egypt sees the sun enter Aries* — the Ram — he 
can look on the visible representative of the invisible God, who 
has thus "covered himself" with the ram's head and fleece. 
Can any myth be more consistent and perfect in all its parts, 
and express more elocpaently the truth of " one invisible 
God, Creator of the visible Universe ? " Yet the Egyptians, 
the priests even, had entirely lost the meaning of such a grand 
conception, and looked only on the contemptible fable, in- 
tended, at first, as a striking symbol to remind them of it. 
Thus superstition and idolatry had crept in, and the people, at 
first imbued with a sublime doctrine destined to last forever, 

* That the world was created at the spring equinox, when the sun 
enters Aries, was, we think, the belief of many ancieat nations, and 
probably of the Egyptians. 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



265 



had become adorers of rams and timid fasters from the flesli of 
sheep ! 

It is impossible to read the second book of the interesting 
History dedicated to the Nine Muses, without a feeling of sad 
pity. We find there the artless effusions of a gifted writer 
setting out from his native Greece, at the beginning of the 
most brilliant period of its existence — Greece victorious over 
tbe Persians, Greece already refined, and on the eve of reach- 
ing the exquisite culture of the era of Pericles — he reflects in 
himself all the intelligence, culture, refinement of his native 
country ; he comes to visit a land celebrated for its early civil- 
ization, which Solon and Pythagoras had already admired, 
and which Plato, with many other men of genius, would visit 
later ; the common report is, that it is a land not only of mys- 
tery, but of wisdom ; a thoroughly religious country, where 
many sublime truths can be known about the " worship of 
the gods." The amiable traveller is himself religiously in- 
clined, though, too often, even in him, the future scepticism 
of his countrymen begins to appear. Yet he is careful not to 
betray the secrets of religion, since religion has secrets in 
Egypt. At every moment he says that " he would speak if he 
dared ;" that " it is more becoming for him not to mention it, 
though he knows it ;" that the obscenities which he is obliged 
to relate " are accounted for by a sacred story ;" that " it were 
impious for him to divulge " the reason of the absurdities 
which he narrates, etc., etc. And when, finally, garrulity con- 
quers, and he says what he " ought not to say ;" when he feels 
that he has betrayed some secret, and he is bound to pray that 
" he may meet with indulgence and pardon both from gods 
and heroes," the secrets which he unveils are as ridiculous as 
the stories themselves. The Thebans abstain from mutton be- 
cause J upiter covered himself with a ram's skin to show him- 
self to Hercules ! 
When he compares the religion of his country with that of 



266 



GENTILISM. 



Egypt, it is nearly always to place side by side the " dresses of 
the gods ; " the " Hercules " of one country with that of the 
other ; the ridiculous " l-ites " of the Egyptians with the yet 
more childish "rites'" of the Lybians, the Phoenicians, or of 
his own Greeks. Of what deserves the name of religion, not a 
wind ! And, if ancient wisdom has spoken in the land of mys- 
tery, and the word she spoke reaches the ear of the traveller, it 
does not bring to his mind any rational thought; but it is alto- 
gether a jumble of puerilities when it is not a disgusting spec- 
tacle of coarseness. Miss Maria Graham, in her " Journal of a 
Residence in India," (1812), remarks that, " The coarseness and 
ineleg nice <»f the I lindoo polytheism will certainly disgust many 
people accustomed to the graceful mythology of Europe .... 
For my own part," she adds, " living among ths people, and 
daily beholding the prostrate. worshipper, the temple, the altar, 
and the offering, I take an interest in them which makes up for 
their want of poetical beauty." And, again, in another place : 
" When processions are in honor of a god, they take place dur- 
ing the day ; the deity is carried on a litter in triumph, with 
banners before and behind, and priests are seen carrying flow- 
ers, and milk and rice ; while hardly any one joins the proces- 
sion without an offering. All this looks very well at a distance,, 
but when one comes near, one is shocked at the meanness and 
inelegance of the god, and at the filth and wretchedness of his 
votaries." 

Mis-> Maria Graham would, no doubt, have been highly 
pleased with polytheism in the East, in her time, had it been 
polished and elegant, as that of Greece and Egypt was in her 
opinion. Yet had she witnessed the scenes described by Hero- 
dotus, as he saw them himself on the banks of the JSTile, she 
might have not found so great a difference between the poly- 
theism of our day and that of antiquity. Let the reader im- 
agine an incredible procession of boats on the mighty river, con-, 
veying seven hundred thousand men and women to Bubastis ; 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



267 



each barge filled with, men and women together, some of the 
women playing on castanets, keeping time for men who played 
on the flute, the remainder of the human cargoes clapping 
their hands, singing and dancing without order. Let the 
reader imagine, we say, what must take place, not on the voy- 
age only, but at every town on the banks of the Nile, where the 
huge fleet stopped to allow the travellers the pleasure not only 
of bandying words with the inhabitants, bnt chiefly of so out- 
raging decency, that our pen cannot reproduce the words of 
the Greek writer. As to the festival itself, at Bubastis, Hero- 
dotus does not attempt to describe it, but he merely says : 
" They offer np great sacrifices, and more wine is consumed at 
this feast than in all the rest of the year." But with respect 
to the ceremonies which accompany the yearly sacrifice of swine 
to Osiris, we shrink from even an allusion to the obscenities in 
open air which disgrace the whole proceedings. 

The Egyptian rites, therefore, in the time of Herodotus, 
were as gross and licentious as those of the degrade^ Hindoos 
of our days. But it was not so at tbe beginning. Already 
have we been told that nothing can be found on the primitive 
monuments of Nubia and Ethiopia, any more than on those of 
ancient Egypt, that " could offend decency." 

We need dilate no more on the gradual decay of true relig- 
ion in ancient Egypt. The process of disintegration in every 
respect is visible enough. ISToble religious truths spread at 
first over a great part of Africa, begin by admitting a mix- 
ture of error. Soon the genuine dogmas are altogether ob- 
scured, and totally forgotten, although still preserved in books 
which have not yet perished. The worship of elements be- 
comes, then, universal, until the progress of art brings the wor- 
ship of idols, which ends finally in rank fetichism. 

All the various tribes of the third continent, which had at 
first a common doctrine, loose it and are reduced each to its 
local superstitions. Religion becomes more clannish, perhaps, 



268 



GENTILISM. 



in Egypt than in any other country on earth. What we see, 
now, all over the interior of that vast continent is merely the 
result of this long process of mental, social, and religious disin- 
tegration. When the Romans took possession of the lower 
basin of the ISTile, the whole country was a putrid moral cess- 
pool. Hence there was not, there could not be, the slightest 
resistance against the spread of their power. The Christian 
religion alone gave it a temporary splendor by the great men 
whom the Church produced in that land so long degraded; 
until Mohammedanism brutally quenched this last spark of holy 
fire, only to be succeeded by what we now witness in that de- 
voted country. 

A few remarks, in conclusion, on the " Funereal Ritual " of 
the ancient Egyptians, will complete our argument in proof of 
the process of moral deterioration universal in ancient history, 
in so far as Egypt is concerned. We quote F. Lenormant : 

" The Kgy|>ti:ms," says Uorappollo in the Hieroglyphics, 
" call knowledge ' sbo,' that is, ' food and plenty.' This passage 
certainly contains an allusion to the religious ideas as deter- 
mining the destiny of the dead. Knowledge and food are, in 
fact, identified on every page of the Ritual. The knowledge of 
religions truths is the mysterious nourishment the soul must 
carry with it to sustain it in its journeys and trials. A soul 
not po--i'~-ing this knowledge could never reach the end of its 
journey, and would be rejected at the tribunal of Osiris. It 
was, therefore, necessary, before commencing the journey, to 
be furnished with a stock of this divine provision. To this 
end is destined the long chapter, the seventeenth, at the end of 
the second part of the book. It is accompanied by a large 
vignette, representing a series of the most sacred symbols of 
the Egyptian religion. The text contains a description of these 
symbols, with their mystical explanation. At the beginning of 
the chapter, the descriptions and explanations are sufficiently 
clear, but as it advances, we get into a higher and more ob- 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



2G9 



scure region ; at the end of the chapter we lose the clue 
almost entirely, and, as often happens in- such cases, the expla- 
nation ends by being more obscure than the symbols and ex- 
pressions explained." (Anc. Hist, of the East, Yol. 1.) 

In a note on this passage reference is made to a peculiarity 
of the text first pointed out by Baron Bunsen, which is this : 
" The original text is, after every sentence, followed by a com- 
mentary, explanation, or gloss, prefaced in every case by a 
group of characters in red, meaning ' The explanation is this,' 
or ' Let him explain it.' From this it necessarily arises : first, 
that the text had by a certain time become so unintelligible as 
to require an explanation ; secondly, that the explanation itself 
had in its turn become unintelligible ; and finally, that the text 
and gloss, equally obscure, had been jumbled together, and 
written out as one continuous document." ISTo fact could bet- 
ter prove that any text requires an infallible interpreter to be 
for ever proof against error. 

Here we have a very simple, natural, and probably true de- 
scription of the' way "the Egyptian faith" had become a real 
" jumble " of unintelligible phrases ; and this by the early time 
of the eleventh dynasty, as this seventeenth chapter of the 
" Funereal Ritual" was found on a papyrus of that age. 

Mr. Alexis Chevalier, in the " Correspondant " of Paris, of 
the 10th August, 1872, writes as follows, in accordance with 
the opinions of such men as de Rouge, Mariette, Lenormant, 
etc. : " If ancient civilization, particularly that of Egypt, has 
shed a brilliant light, it is only because the great things accom- 
plished by the people of those times sprung originally from the 
truths and virtues of the natural order, and likewise from the 
remains of the primitive Revelation, of which the religious 
and moral doctrines of the Egyptians have so clearly showed us 
the footmarks. 

" But as soon as those traditions decline in strength, a dis- 
agreement, nay, a contradiction becomes directly more and 



270 



GENTILISM. 



more sensible between the healthy moral thoughts primitively 
contained in the Funereal Ritual, and that monstrous religion 
which degraded the soul of man by the worship of animals, and 
let loose by its shameless mysteries all the depraved inclina- 
tions of our fallen nature .... 

" Under the pernicious influence of this corrupt religion the 
moral vigor of man is weakened, social order becomes less vig- 
orous, and the nation finds itself powerless to repel foreign in- 
vasion .... We all know how animal-worship had rendered 
the Egyptians ridiculous and contemptible in the eyes of other 
nations. After having obtained a complete victory before Pe- 
lusium, merely by placing a number of cats, of dogs, and other 
' sacred ' animals in the front rank of his army J Cambyses 
made it a point of killing with his own hand the ox Apis, to 
show his worshippers the powerlessness of their god .... 

" The more we go up towards the origin of the Egyptian 
nation, the clearer we find, in their primitive purity, the prin- 
ciples of the natural law revealed to man at first by God him- 
self : the adoration of one only God, creator of the world and 
of man ; paternal authority and the respect clue to parents by 
their children ; the love of the neighbor ; the necessity of labor ; 
the immortality of the soul, and due rewards and punishments 
after this life . . . ." 

" But the more we go down in time, and farther from the 
cradle of primitive society, the more altered we find the pri- 
mordial truths and divine traditions by the invasion of polythe- 
ism, which had perverted everything on earth' when the Re- 
deemer finally appeared. 

"A time shall finally come," says Hermes Trismegistus, 
quoted by St. Augustine (De Civ., Dei viii., 23, 26), " when 
it will be found that in vain have the Egyptians first honored 
God rightfully and faithfully ; their most holy worship shall 
have brought them no profit, and go out in smoke .... Then 
this venerable land, consecrated of old by innumerable temples 



CENTRAL ASIA AND AFRICA. 



271 



and alta»3, shall be henceforth full only of dead bodies and of 
sepulchres." 

With these quotations we close our argument, in so far as 
Egypt is concerned, and we think our induction was equally 
convincing with respect to India : that nations left to them- 
selves, retrograde invariably ; at least, that they did so in the 
time previous to Christianitj r , from truth to error, from a pure 
morality to degradation, from a truly civilized but simple state, 
to an artificial and brilliant corruption, ending in moral putrid- 
ity and national dishonor. 
19 



CHAPTEK V. 



RELIGION IN PELASGIC GREECE. 
I. 

That Europeans are not autochthones, but came from an- 
other continent — that, consequently, the most primitive inhab- 
itants of the western part of the old world were not of native 
growth, but immigrants from an original foreign country — is 
now admitted by all. And the strange theory so prevalent a 
few years back, which supposed many "centres of creation," 
even for man, seems now to be forgotten, until, perhaps, our 
grandchildren hear of it again in some other shape. A Dar- 
winian may, possibly, conclude that we came from Asia or 
Africa ; since, with the exception of the rock of Gibraltar, 
where a few monkeys amuse, by their gambols, the English gar- 
rison settled there, no individual of the Simian family, from 
which man is said to have sprung, can claim Europe for its 
native country. "We prefer, on the score of reason alone, to 
conclude that the creation of the primitive man did not take 
place in Europe ; and all are now of this opinion, some for one 
reason, some for another. History, geography, philology, give 
the various proofs leading to that conclusion, independently of 
revealed truth. History began evidently in Asia and Africa, 
and except upon the supposition of the previous population of 
these two continents, European history, from the start, would 
be a puzzle. Asia, especially, is the great and high centre, 
looming up in the distance of ages, from which the diverse 
streams of human annals took their rise and began to flow. A 
(272) 



RELIGION IN PELASGIC GREECE. 



273 



few years back some ingenious writers tried to make geography 
the great prop of the same truth ; and Mr. E. Pococke, in his 
" India in Greece," produced an immense number of names of 
mountains, rivers, lakes, and cities indicating Asia and JSTorth 
Hindostan, in particular, as the primitive spot whence tribes 
started in search of a new home in the wilds of the West. 
Precisely in the same way, as some future writer will be able 
to show, that America and Australia were colonized by Euro- 
peans merely by the various names given to the geographical 
features of these two continents. But philology, especially, 
has of late been adduced, with great force, to prove that it is 
to the great plateau of Central Asia we must look for the real 
origin of all European nations, with the trivial exception of the 
Turks, the Magyars, and the Finns. Sanscrit seems to be the 
mother tongue, though some philologists suppose a more an- 
cient and primitive language out of which even the Sanscrit 
arose. But the very interesting discoveries of Max Miiller in his 
" Comparative Philology," establish an intimate connection 
between Europe and Central Asia — the precise spot to which 
we traced, in a previous chapter, the original seat of the 
Yedas and the Zends. A new name has been given to the 
whole, or rather a very old name has been revived, and Europe 
speaks again of the Aryans as of her ancestors. God be 
praised ! The current of European opinion, this time, does not 
run counter to revealed truth. For the latter, together with 
the whole voice of antiquity, had taught us to believe that the 
population of Europe and of Northern Asia was Japhetic ; and 
the word Aryan, after all, means only the posterity of Japhet. 
A Catholic, therefore, can now embrace Science as a daughter 
of heaven, and replace, with her help, the true foundation of 
the history of man. And, at the same time that the dignity of 
our species is asserted anew, a*nd the belief of our first ancestors 
is proved to have been that of rational beings, namely, the wor- 
ship of one Supreme God ; the true origin of error, and the 



274 



GENTILISM. 



unfortunate spread of polytheism, become finally evident, and 
show conclusively how the author of the Book of Wisdom 
knew well history as well as ethics. 

But iu Europe, Hellas must he the first subject of our inves- 
tigations, as she is the first spot where positive history appears, 
and from her all Europe, except the Celtic and the northern 
Germanic races, received truth and error. 

First, let us describe, in a few words, what the new discov- 
eries in philology have rendered probable with respect to the 
migration of primitive tribes from the starting-point of the 
great plateau of Central Asia. It seems to us to be only a 
detailed commentary of what the Book of Genesis had long 
previously stated. 

The first migration is admitted to have consisted of the ances- 
tors of the Celts or Kelts, the posterity of Gomer (Kymris), 
I'Miililished first on the northern shore of the Black Sea. Later, 
the Teutonic people, perhaps Magog, a general term for tribes 
north-west of Caucasus, rather than Tartars, together with the 
Greeks and Italians (Javan). All these, it is now said, would 
seem to have made their way to their new settlements, through 
Persia and Asia Minor, crossing to Europe by the Hellespont, 
some, perhaps, through the passes of the Caucasus. The 
Sclavonic nations are thought to have afterwards taken their 
route by the north of the Caspian. They may be indicated by 
the Teras of Genesis, the river Tiras, or the Dniester. Finally, 
the Medes, Persians, and North Hindoos are supposed to have 
been the last emigrants from Central Asia, through tbe passes 
of the Himalaya and Hindu Kush. We do not see precisely 
why this should have been the last emigration. Genesis 
places the one of the Madai directly after that of Magog. In 
our opinion, the direction southward must have been one of 
the first taken by the migrating patriarchal peoples. Yet it is 
certainly remarkable that modern investigators, in working 
away at their speculations derived only from the comparative 



EELIGION EST PELASGIC GREECE. 



275 



study of Sanscrit and European languages, without having, for 
a moment, in their minds, we are sure, the thought either of 
Genesis or of Japhet, should happen to give us a new interpre- 
tation of a few verses of the first book of Moses. So it is, 
however. Only, there is no question any more of the Tower of 
Babel, which was generally, until lately, considered as the 
starting-point of those primitive migrations. Central Asia 
now replaces it. But it is to be remarked that the history of 
Babel's edifice is given in Chap. xi. of Genesis, and the list of 
nations, which subsequently separated from each other, in 
Chap. x. The writer, therefore, did not intend to establish a 
connection between the various settlements of the nations 
alluded to and the confusion of tongues ; and thus there is not 
the least discrepancy between our sacred text and the modern 
discoveries ; and this is a very favorable circumstance for the 
" discoveries,"' as the " sacred text," in our opinion, never had 
anything to fear from modern investigators. 

We are, therefore, brought back by the labors of recent 
ethnologists and linguists to the time-honored book and termi- 
nology, dear to Christians ; and we may now, again, speak of 
the Japhetic race without fear of being " unscientific." We 
come, therefore, to consider the Javan (Ionian) family in that 
great race. The questions we propose to ourselves are : What 
is its origin ? What was its primitive religion ? How did it 
degenerate into the polytheist anthromorphism of which our 
classical studies have so well informed us ? 

II. 

The various branches of the Japhetic or Aryan family which 
remained in Asia continued for many ages civilized, polished, 
monotheists ; or, only if not pure mOnotheists, at least men 
whose religion was just on the borders of that broad and grand 



276 



GENTILISM. 



pantheism to which we have had occasion to allude so often. 
Probably the Vedas and the Zends, containing at first the 
main doctrines of the primitive revelation, were written for 
tham after their less fortunate brethren had left for the 
X I rth-west. These, therefore, could take with them no copy of 
those great works. Had they at the time an alphabet ? It is 
probable f since they knew so well the Sanscrit. Had they in 
their possession a written literature of any kind ? The prob- 
ability is, that they had not; since they made such indifferent 
custodians of the language they possessed on parting, and made 
subsequently such a poor use of it in the various settlements 
they occupied. 

The language, at least, which they brought with them could 
not be but strangely modified by the various dialects of the 
nations through whose territory they had to pass. A great 
number of tribes had migrated before them, going in the same 
direction ; and Mr. Max Miiller has shown, in his " Languages 
of the Seat of War," that, from that- early period to this, the 
"Western part of Asia and the South-east of Europe have been 
inhabited by nations speaking an incredible number of tongues. 
" The Caucasus itself," he says, " is called by the Persians the 
mountain of languages ; and the diversity of dialects spoken 
there in every valley has been the chief obstacle to a united 
resistance on the part of the Caucasian tribes against Russia. 
The South-east of Europe has indeed long been notorious as a 
Babel of tongues. Herodotus (iv., 24) tells us that caravans of 
Greek merchants, following the course of the Volga upwards to 
the Ural mountains, were accompanied by seven interpreters, 
speaking seven different languages. These must have com- 
prised Sclavonic, Tartaric, and Finnic dialects, spoken in those 
countries in the time of Herodotus as well as at the pres- 
ent day. In yet earlier times the South-east of Europe was 
the resting-place for the nations who transplanted the seed of 
Asia to European soil. Three roads were open to their North- 



KELIGION IN PELASGIC GEEECE. 277 

westward migrations. One east of the Caspian Sea, and west 
of the mountains, leading to the North of Asia and Europe. 
Another on the Caucasian Isthmus, when they would advance 
along the northern coast of the Black Sea, and following the 
course of the Dnieper, Dniester, or Danube, be led into Russia 
or Germany. 

"A third road was defined by the Taurus through Asia Minor, 
to the point where the Hellespont marks the ' path of the Hel- 
lenes ' into Greece and Italy. While the main stream of the 
Aryan nations passed on, carrying its waves to the northern and 
western shores of Europe, it formed a kind of eddy in the Car- 
pathian peninsula, and we may still discover in the stagnant dia- 
lects, north and south of the Danube, the traces of the flux and 
*reflux of those tribes who have since become the ruling nations 
of Europe. The barbarian inroads, which, from the seventh cen- 
tury after Christ, infested the regions of civilization, and led to 
the destruction of the Greek and Roman Empires, followed all 
the same direction. The country near the Danube and the 
Black Sea has been for ages the battle-field of Asia and Europe. 
Each language settled there on the confines of civilization and 
barbarism recalls a chapter of history." 

"We can understand how many obstacles were thus placed in 
the path of the future Hellenes and Italians. But the worst, 
for them, was the aspect of the unpromising countries which 
they were going to turn into a paradise. We talk of our 
Western American colonists being hardy pioneers, and carry- 
ing civilization into the wilds of the far-west ! We think it 
quite natural that these restless roamers over our immense 
prairies, should become half barbarians and savages on the bor- 
ders of civilization ! How different is their position in these 
recent days ! Were our emigrants to the West to profit by all 
the advantages they enjoy, there would be no necessity what- 
ever for them to fall into barbarism and uncouth savagery. 
But could the wretched children of the third son of Noah avoid 



278 



GENTILISM. 



the terrible fate of lapsing into barbarous manners, and of fall- 
ing into the most brutal ignorance and superstition ? The 
more that they were destined to have no more any intercourse 
whatever with their original country, and to forget it so en- 
tirely, that it would take very nearly four thousand years to 
recover their claim of lineage with their real ancestors. 

Picture we, then, these migrating tribes, as they wandered 
away from their early civilization, making a path for them- 
selves through the tangled and interminable forests, stretching 
north and west as far as the ocean, and obliged to cross the 
redoutable mountains of Northern Persia, of Armenia, of the 
Caucasus ; where first one of them, Prometheus, a representa- 
tive man, was to be bound and nailed to a rock, and exposed to 
the cruel talons of the vulture. • 

In how many places did they not stop and attempt a settle- 
ment ? How often, after immense labors, were they not obliged 
to give up the hope of finding a new country in a place which 
at first appeared desirable ? But the forests, the interminable 
forests were everywhere in their way. Then, perhaps, they 
would move on, in the hope of lighting on some more promis- 
ing spot for a settlement, only to find the same difficulties re- 
newed. . 

Mr. E. Pococke, in " India in Greece," represents the move- 
ments of those immense -armies of emigrants under a very dif- 
ferent aspect. If we are to believe him, they went on in an 
uninterrupted stream from their starting-point to their ultimate 
destination, without difficulty, without a moment of hesitation, 
without a shadow of obstacle. They appear to have l|een di- 
rected, as the' Ethiopians were, according to Herodotus, by "the 
voice of the oracle ;" and they stopped only when they reached 
the spot indicated by the " divine commandment." ]STo sooner 
arrived, than they began by mapping oat their new country 
exactly on the pattern of their old one ; and they gave to rivers, 
mountains, lakes, etc., the names of similar geographical fea- 



RELIGION EST PELASGIC GREECE. 279 

tures in their former dwelling-place. Thus it happens that 
Mr. Pococke could write " India in Greece," with two maps ; 
one of the north of Hindostan, the other of Hellas itself, with 
corresponding names and indications, making the nomencla- 
ture of the two territories almost exactly alike. 

But evidently he had not heen one of the primitive travel- 
lers ; he had not even come to North America to see how these 
things are generally clone ; but he quite forgot to picture to * 
himself the world as it must have been at the time of the old 
migration of the sons of Japhet, or, if you choose, of the "Aryan 
tribes ;" and has, consequently, produced a work, which, how- 
ever full of curious erudition, is fantastic and visionary in the 
highest degree. He maintains, for example, that those " Aryan 
tribes " were at the same time " Buddhist :" and has been 
compelled to make the brilliant Athenians, the decendants of 
the " Attock," ^a gloomy Buddhist community of the Punjab ! ! 
although Buddhism originated more than a thousand years 
later. Yet with all the strangeness and incongruities of the 
book, with its false conclusions and absurd theories, it shows 
conclusively that the " Hellenes " must have been formerly 
deeply connected with the Hindoos ; and no man of any under- 
standing and knowledge would at this time contradict this 
position. 

The circumstance mentioned above, however, namely, the 
incredible hardships sustained by the emigrants from Northern 
Hindostan to the West, must be insisted upon, as it %ives so 
evident and satisfactory a reason of the state of barbarism in 
which, according to all ancient authors, the first inhabitants of 
Greece were plunged. Had not Prometheus, according to 
^Eschylus, speaking the language of universal tradition (Prometh. 
vinctus), " to invent for them the senses of sight and of hear- 
ing ? To bring them out of their caves and teach them how to 
build wooden houses ? To make them first observe the differ- 
ence of seasons, of hard winter, and flowery spring, and fruitful 



280 GENTILISM. 

summer? To discover for them numbers, and the combina- 
tions of letters, and even memory, the effective mother-nurse 
of all arts ?" 

a 

From the traditions of Greece, this narrative of the primitive 
state of man was handed down as the first page of the annals of 
all Europeans. In their long ramblings through the wilds of 
the western continent the wretched emigrants from Asia had 
well-nigh forgotten the comparatively brilliant state enjoyed 
by all in their former country. And can we, wonder that relig- 
ious doctrines had been in the main forgotten like all things 
else conducive to their comfort and civilization? 

But here the inquiry naturally presents itself, Were the first 
settlers in the country we now call Greece, Hellenes ? "Were 
they not rather Pelasgians ? What of them ? 

in. 

Certainly Pelasgic tribes — thus were they called — dwelt in 
very early times all over Greece, chiefly in Thrace at the north 
of it, and in many districts of Western Asia, and of Southern 
Italy, and in the islands of the Mediterranean Sea ; in fact, 
wherever the Greek tribes latterly spread themselves and their 
language ultimately prevailed. In spite of profound researches 
in all the annals of antiquity which yet remain in our hands, in 
spite of* the ingenuity of m modern critics, and of the light 
thrown recently over many particularities of the life of nations 
until this time unknown, no Satisfactory solution has yet ap- 
peared of this question, Who were the Pelasgians ?. We will 
not attempt to discuss it, as it does not lie directly in our way. 
It is generally believed that the extraordinary ancient build- 
ings, known as Cyclopean, whose ruins are yet found all over 
the above-mentioned countries, were their work. They were at 
the same time an agricultural and warlike people, but more the 



RELIGION IN PELASGIC GREECE. 



281 



former than the latter. They were constantly moving, often 
crossing the sea, yet not given over to trade, like the Phoenicians, 
who came after them. These characteristics seem pretty well 
ascertained, and are generally admitted by all writers. But 
what relations had they to the Hellenes ? For a long time the 
two races were contemporaneous. Herodotus says that their 
language was " barbarous," — that is to say, " foreign " to the 
Greeks; but this does not suppose a totally different tongue. 
A dialect not easily understood at first would suffice for the 
epithet. Homer sometimes speaks of both nations as belong- 
ing to the same race. At other times he distinguishes them 
and seems not to agree with himself. But, without quoting 
ancient authorities, which have been sufficiently examined by 
modern investigators, the opinion of those who, in our days, 
think that the Pelasgians gradually passed into the Hellenes, 
and these last insensibly came from the first, is respectable and 
seems to us the most probable, precisely from the indistinctness 
of the difference, even in the eyes of those who admit a differ- 
ence. Both, moreover, can be reconciled, by admitting that 
the " Javans " — Javanas in Sanscrit — did not migrate all at once 
from Central Asia, but that the first migratory band took the 
name of Pelasgians, and the second one that of Hellenes. For 
certainly all must admit now, after the labors of Miiller and 
others, that both came from the same original centre. 

It is the religion of those migrating tribes, however, which 
chiefly concerns onr investigations. And here a great uncer- 
tainty prevails, as in the case of Egypt, chiefly on account of 
the want of documents, arising from the uncivilized state to 
which they were necessarily reduced by all the circumstances of 
their migration. 

We leam from Herodotus (Euterpe, 52), that " Formerly the 
Pelasgians sacrificed all sorts of victims to the gods with prayers, 
as I was informed at Dodona ; but they gave no surname or 
name to any of them, for they had not yet heard of them ; but 



2 so 



GENTILISM. 



they called them gods — Theoi, because they had set in order and 
ruled over all things. In course of time, they heard the names 
of the other gods that were brought from Egypt, and after 
some time that of Dionysus. Qn this question they consulted 
the oracle of Dodona, for this oracle is accounted the most 
ancient of those that are in Greece, and was then the only one. 
When, therefore, the Pelasgians inquired at Dodona whether 
they should receive the names that came from the barbarians, 
the oracle answered, that they should. From that time, there- 
fore, they gave names to the gods in their sacrifices, and the 
Grecians afterwards received them from the Pelasgians." 

This is a most important passage, as it explains very natu- 
rally the origin of idolatry in Greece. The Pelasgians had left 
Central Asia before the worship of elements had introduced 
polytheism. Indra, Agni, Cuhu, etc., were not yet individual- 
ized. They were merely aspects of nature calling back the 
mind to God ; and were known, probably, under the general 
name of " devatas." The Pelasgians, in their new country, 
called them " Theoi," in general. When they heard of the 
individual names given by the Egyptians to their gods, they in- 
quired of the oracle at Dodona, which their growing superstition 
had already established, and the " lying oracle " deceived them. 
Hence their acceptance of individual names for their gods; 
that is to say, of idolatry, which they passed over to the 
Hellenes. 

A discovery made by modern collectors of Pelasgic antiqui- 
ties, not long since, still further illustrates this part of our sub- 
ject. A curious piece of sculpture, of undoubted Pelasgic 
origin, was ascertained to be a zoavov, or Divine Image of 
Orpheus ; showing that this more than half -mythic personage 
was truly Pelasgic, and must be fc referred to the Ante-Hellenic 
period. 

A reflection of Heeren will help us to the conclusion we 
would draw from these two facts. It is taken from his 



EELIGION EST PELASGIC GEEECE. 



283 



"Ancient Greece," Chap. iii. : " The feelings of religion can 
be unfolded, and thus the character of onr existence ennobled, 
even before a high degree of knowledge has been attained. It 
would be difficult, and, perhaps, impossible, to find a nation 
which can show no vestiges of religion ; and there never yet 
has been, nor can there be, a people for whom the reverence 
paid to a superior being was but the fruit of refined philo- 
sophy." 

There can, certainly, be no doubt that God spoke to the 
patriarchs before philosophy systematized human knowledge. 
The language of divine revelation cannot contradict that of 
reason, yet is superior to it ; fiist, because it unfolds truths 
which reason could not attain ; and, secondly, because the truths 
demonstrable by human reason, as the existence of God, His 
unity, etc., are much more safely guarded and secured to man- 
kind when they form a part of a religion coming from heaven. 
On this account God, full of love for man, and always doing 
for him more than is strictly necessary, gave him from the be- 
ginning a deposit of religious truths, which can be said to be 
anterior to reflection, in the tense that man had not yet used 
his reason to reflect on them ; and thus the words of the Got- 
tingen Professor expresses a fact, extremely important for us, 
since they give to divine revelation a place assigned to it, we 
may say, histoi*ically. It is not named, it is true, but it is 
evidently supposed in the words above quoted. 

As Greece is undoubtedly the country where philosophical 
systems have most flourished, as subtlety of reasoning was 
there the peculiar character of the people — as no metaphysical 
subject, indeed, can be adequately investigated without a thor- 
ough acquaintance with what the Greeks have said on the mat- 
ter — it becomes of extreme importance to examine if the mono- 
theism- taught by Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, and so many 
others, was merely a philosophical conclusion, or if it was not 
the handing down of primitive doctrines left to the race by 



284 



GENTILISM. 



mystagogues, as they were called, who were merely the chan- 
nel of a belief revealed to the first men by the God " who 
spoke to the fathers." And this question is more important in 
the case of the Hellenes than in that of any other nation of 
antiquity, for the following reasons : 

If there is one country where the doctrine of progress ap- 
pears to be proved by actual facts, it is certainly Greece. We 
have heard JSschylus describing the state of its primitive inhab- 
itants as that of savages living in caves, without the senses of 
sight and hearing, unable to discern the difference of seasons, 
etc. ; and we see them, in the course of centuries, reaching 
the highest civilization and culture, and proving, rationally 
and metaphysically, the existence of a Supreme God and the 
immortality of the human soul. "We must endeavor to show 
that this "progress" was not really of the character indicated; 
that, at the beginning of the series, humanity possessed, in 
fact, all the truths which long afterwards appeared to have 
been discovered ; and that, in the words of the Professor of 
Gottingen, speaking of Greece, " There never yet has been, 
nor can there be, a people for whom the reverence paid to a 
superior being was but the fruit of refined philosophy." 

Did the Pelasgians, and after them the Hellenes, bring noth- 
ing from Central Asia where they had left such heaven-taught 
ancestors ? or did these two migrating armies lose entirely, in 
the hardships of the way, the traditions and belief handed 
down to them ? 

Cadmus, it is said, brought the first alphabet to Greece, and 
he was a Phoenician, and established himself in Bseotia. The 
Pelasgians dwelt chiefly in Thrace and Thessaly, far from the 
land adopted by Cadmus, and do not appear to have profited 
by the boon which he brought to Greece. They may, how- 
ever, have had an alphabet of their own, and, if so, probably 
they had brought it from Asia. Yet no Pelasgian inscription, 
that we know of, has been discovered. How can wo know 



RELIGION IN PELASGIC GREECE. 285 

what were their religious ideas ? Herodotus, who had heard 
it from the priests of Dodona in Thessaly, affirms that they did 
not worship at first individual gods, but merely superior beings, 
without names, whom they called " Theoi ;" and Thrace and 
Thessaly was precisely the country where Orpheus flourished. 
He must have been one of them. We are confirmed in that 
supposition hy the Soavov, or Divine Image preserved to this 
day, and sculptured by Pelasgic hands thousands of years ago. 
The great question, for us, therefore, is merely, Who was Or- 
pheus ? and did Pythagoras, and Plato, and other philosophers 
of the same school receive anything from him ? and had the 
doctrine of Orpheus any analogy with that of Central Asia ? 

TV. 

We have all heard what the fable relates of Orpheus, the 
son of Apollo and Calliope, the great inventor of harmony, 
on whom Apollo, his father, bestowed the gift of the lyre ; to 
whose songs men and beasts, the birds of the air and the fishes 
of the sea, nay, the trees and the rocks, were not insensible ; 
who accompanied the Argonauts in their expeditions, and 
secured their success by lulling monsters to sleep, and check- 
ing overhanging rocks in their impetuous fall ; who finally 
brought back Euridice from the lower regions, and, at last, 
perished, miserably torn to pieces by the Menades. 

But here, as usual, Hellenic imagination has buried the prim- 
itive myth under such richness of exaggerated details, that 
it is impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff, and the 
whole of it deserves to be rejected. It is worthy of note, how- 
ever, that Suidas pretends that Orpheus was not a single indi- 
vidual, but that the deeds of several heroes were attributed to 
one, as was frequently the case among the ancients. And it is 
probable, in our opinion, that they were all of them Pelasgians, 



286 



GENTILISM. 



that is to say, belonged to the first emigration of Javans from 
Central Asia. One only of them, it is true, seems to have bad 
tbe name of Orpheus whilst living ; for modern Sanscrit 
scholars think they find bim mentioned in the Yedas under tbe 
name of Arbh u, Avhose pronunciation comes very near to that 
of Orpheio ; other orientalists had, long ago, pointed out that 
Arif, in Arabic, means a learned man, a savant (itoffmann, 
Lex. Univ). The coincidence is remarkable, although the Ara- 
bic, a Semitic tongue, seems to have few common features with 
the Sanscrit. All this, nevertheless, points out to the East as 
the primitive country of the initiator of the Greeks in religious 
doctrines and mysteries, for such was always Orpheus thought 
to be. 

It is true, the opinion of Aristotle that Orpheus never ex- 
isted, and that the doctrines attributed to him were not so 
ancient as was pretended, has been admitted by modem writers 
of note. Yet it must be said that Aristotle was the only one 
of tbe ancients who thought so. All the others, without ex- 
ception, believed in the existence of the celebrated Thracian 
mystagogue, and thought him as great in religious inspiration, 
as mythology made him in strange adventures and artistic 
gifts. And this opinion of the ancients was shared by the 
Fathers of the Church of the first centuries. So that around 
the name of Orpheus we see the same ideas gather in Greece, 
which we have already remarked to have gathered in Egypt 
around that of Hermes. He was said to be a divine bard in 
the service of Zagreus, the horned child of Zeus and Persep- 
hone — a kind of mystic Dionysus half buried in obscurity. He 
was not only the first to use the lyre, but he had initiated the 
men of his time and country into the rites of expiation, teach- 
ing them bow to appease the wrath of tbe gods ; and he had 
explained to them the art of divination, as well as the art of 
letters and of poetry. According to Pausanias (in Bceot.), he 
was the first to teach a whole system of universal theology ; he 



RELIGION IN PELASGIC GREECE. 



237 



had written on the reciprocal action of the elements, on the 
force of love (or of attraction) in natural things, on the ob- 
servation of auguries, on the interpretation of dreams, on signs 
and wonders, how to conjure their fatal prognostications. 

Lactantius (Divine Institutes) called him " the most ancient 
of the poets," and thought that "he spoke of the true and 
great God as the first born (nparoyovov). He also said that 
Orpheus " called God Thanes (0av?/Ta)." — the appearer — be- 
cause when as yet there was nothing, He first appeared and 
came forth from the infinite." A doctrine evidently Vedic as 
well as Egyptian. 

When we stated that Orpheus was, like Hercules, a type to 
which many events of particular lives were referred, we could 
not corroborate our assertion by any facts, as things and men 
are necessarily confused and mixed together in so high an an- 
tiquity. Yet a coincidence, remarkable certainly in many 
points of view, comes here to our rescue, and deserves to be 
noted. The name of Orpheus, in ancient writers, is nearly 
always accompanied with two other names more obscure yet 
than his own : those of Musseus and Linus. Who were these ? 
They must have belonged to the same age, although some 
critics doubt if they were not posterior to Homer. The mass 
of evidence, however, is against this last opinion. Musseus is 
said to have been an Athenian, Linus a Theban. They were 
not certainly from Thrace, like Orpheus ; but at the time, all 
Greece, as well as the circumjacent countries, was Pelasgic. 
We know very little of Museeus, and less yet of Linus. Diogenes 
Laertius, however, has preserved of both a short fragment of 
some importance. He asserts that Musseus had said : " e£ hog 
to. Trdvra yeveodai, teal hg ravrbv dvaXveodai" namely : " that 
from One all things had proceeded ; and into the same One all 
should be resolved or return." Sir William Jones would call 
this the substance of the Hindoo gayatri. As to Linus, Laertius 
says that, having written a book on the generation of animals 
20 



288 



GENTILISM. 



and plants, he placed at tlie head of it the following line : 
Hv rrore rot %povog ovrog iv w ufia ttcivt' knetyvKu. " There was 
a time when at once all things were created." This refers 
evidently to the " sleep and dream of Brahma " when all crea- 
tion suddenly appeared. * 

To come back to Orpheus himself, we have no doubt that it 
would make a good size volume, if all the fragments attributed to 
him by the Fathers of the three or four first centuries were col- 
let-ted together and printed with a few pages of comment. But 
it is objected that the " enormous Orphic literature," which re- 
tained its ancient authority as far down as the last generation, 
that is to say, thirty years ago, has been "irrefutably proved to 
be, in its main bulk, as far as it has survived the production of 
those very third and fourth centuries, raised upon a few scanty, 
primitive snatches." We must, at the very beginning of the 
discussion, make some remarks on this assertion, and show that 
it is of a far too sweeping character, and that it leads to an 
altogether false Conclusion. 

Our readers will remember that the very same objection was 
raised against the Hermetic books, and that long ago the right 
answer to it has been given, namely : if the books published 
under the name of Hermes by Neoplatouic, and Christian 
authors, were not really the production of Thoth, yet they con- 
tained really his ideas — 66^ag. The same answer precisely can 
be given here. But how do we know that they were, in the 
present case, the ideas of Orpheus ? By a very simple process. 
Those who published that " enormous Orphic literature " in the 
third and fourth centuries, knew, certainly, absolutely nothing 
of Hindoo lore and Yedic philosophy and religion ; and if they 
had some idea of Egyptian cosmogony, they did not perceive 
its connection with the Orphic literature which they published. 
Tet what was then written under the name of Orpheus is full 
of both Indian and Egyptian ideas, showing the almost com- 
plete identity of both. It must, therefore, have been origin- 



RELIGION IN PELASGIC GREECE. 



289 



ally derived from a source connected with Asia or Africa, as 
Orpheus — or, if our readers prefer — as Pelasgic writers — must 
certainly have been, if the labors of modern Sanscrit scholars, 
particularly Max Miiller, have not been in vain. And it is to 
be remarked that the authors of the " imposture" under discus- 
sion, if it deserves so harsh a name, were precisely the same 
who had also circulated with such a success an " enormous Her- 
metic literature " in the same countries, namely : both ISTeopla- 
tonic philosophers and Christian apologists. 

To prove our assertion, our readers need not be afraid that 
we shall launch into a sea of erudition, and quote a long, dry 
series of passages from Greek and Latin authors. We may be 
satisfied with two of them, which, however, may be regarded 
as an epitome of all. Oar authorities shall be St. Clement of 
Alexandria for the Greeks, and Lactantins for the Latins, both 
unexceptionable in their way. The first is undoubtedly with 
Origen, the most erudite Greek Father of the Church in the 
third century. The same may be said of Lactantius on the 
Latin side. 

The former in his Stromata, Book v., after having, quoted 
the following passage of one of the tragedies of Sophocles, 
which we have lost, thus : 

" When the whole world fades, 
And vanished all the abyss of ocean's waves, 
And earth of trees is hare ; and wrapt in flames, 
The air no more begets the winged tribes ; 
Then He, who all destroyed, shall all restore." 

— This is certainly Yedic — he adds : " We shall find expres- 
sions similar to these also in the Oiphic hymns, written as fol- 
lows : 

"For having hidden all, (He) urought them again 
To gladsome light, forth from His sacred heart, 
Solicitous." 



290 



GENTILISM. 



And a little farther, he himself proceeds : " That respecting 
God, Orpheus had said that He was invisible, and that He was 
known to but one, a Chaldean by race." 

" But in great heaven, He is seated firm 
Upon a throne of gold, and 'ueath His feet 
The earth. His right hand round the ocean's bound 
He stretches ; and the hills' foundations shake 

To the centre by His wrath 

.' He all celestial is, 

And all things finishes upon the earth. 

He, the Beginning, Middle is, and End. 

But Thee I dare not speak. In limbs 

And mind I tremble. He rules from on high." 

And again : 

" Ruler of Ether, Hades, Sea and Land, 
"Who with thy bolts Olympus' strong built home 
Dost shake. Whom demons dread, and whom the throng 

Of gods do fear 

O deathless one 

Our mother's sire! whose wrath makes all things reel. 

.... Deathless Immortal, capable of being 

To the immortals only uttered ! Come, 

Greatest of gods, with Strong Necessity. 

Dread, invincible, great, deathless one, 

Whom Ether crowns.' 1 '' 

And, again, with more appropriateness : 

" One Might, the great, the flaming heavens, was 
One Deity. All things one Being were, in whom 
All these revolve, fire, water, and the earth. " 

Finally, after having quoted a passage wherein he speaks of 
one God in the finest style of the upanishads of the Yedas, and 
passed gradually to another, wherein there is an evident trans- 
ition to pantheism, St. Clement gives one line more, which can- 
not be surpassed by the harshest doctrine of the puranas : " Nor 
is there any other (thing) except the Great King." 



RELIGION IN PELASGIC GREECE. 



291 



We have underlined several passages which certainly recall 
as many Hindoo doctrines. If, in the above quotations, God 
is called " the deathless One, our mother's She," the expression 
is certainly equivalent to the Ermaic doctrine of the " World 
being the Son of God, and the Second God," and to the 
Yedic teaching of " creation emanating from the sleeping- 
Brahma." 

Many more passages of the same kind could be adduced, 
collected by Cudworth in his " Sy sterna Intellectuale ;" but we 
have promised to confine ourselves to quotations of St. Clement 
of Alexandria among the Greek Fathers. A few passages of 
Lactantius will stand for the opinion of the Latin Doctors. 
Cudworth did not see their Indian and Egyptian analogies. 

In the first book of the " Divine Institutes," Chap, v., we 
find a passage attributed to Orpheus, which seems an exact 
reproduction of many texts out of the dialogue "Asclepius," 
among the writings of Hermes : " Orpheus .... speaks of the 
true .and great God as the first-born (TTpuroyovov), because 
nothing was ever produced before Him, but all things sprung 
from Him. He also calls him Phanes, the appearer, because 
when, as yet, there was nothing, He first appeared and came 
forth from the infinite. And since he (Orpheus) was unable 
to conceive in his mind the origin and nature of this Being, 
he said that He was born from the boundless air : ' The first- 
born Phaeton, son of the extended air.' He affirms that this 
Being is the parent of all the gods, on wbose account He 
framed the heavens, and provided for his children, that they 
might have a habitation and place of abode in common ; ' He 
built for immortals an imperishable home.' " 

No one will, we hope, deny that this theology, which is, of 
course, erroneous, is yet very superior to the celebrated myth- 
ology which prevailed during the " enlightened " period of 
Greece, and that, consequently, the " progress " in that " pro- 
gressive" land was far from an improvement, and may be 



292 



GENTILISM. 



said to have there also, on the whole, " progressed " back- 
wards. 

But, unnecessary as we' think it to quote more at length 
what the Keoplatonists and the Christian writers of the third 
and fourth centuries have said and believed of the writings of 
Orpheus, we must answer the objection alluded to above, 
namely, that nothing certain can be said about it, and that no 
sound criticism is able to make any use of this " enormous 
Orphic literature." 

In the time of Pythagoras, if not even before, the same im- 
portance was ascribed to a certain body of Orphic dostrines, as 
in the third and fourth centuries after Christ, although the 
nature of the doctrines is now unknown. ■ But they could not 
have been the " enormous Orphic literature, which has been 
ascertained to have been the production of these very third 
and fourth centuries of our era," and which, consequently, 
could not have ex : sted at the time of Pythagoras. To Karl 
Ottfried Midler we owe the certain knowledge of several facts 
on the subject, which give a great probability to our own 
■theory. This eminent Hellenist scholar thought, it is true, that 
ithe old Orphic literature was, " like Orpheus' own biography, 
the darkest point in the entire histoiy of early Greek poetry ;" 
yet he established clearly the fact of a very " early literature 
of that kind." He showed conclusively that a universal tradi- 
tion in Greece pointed to it. Orpheus formed the brightest 
link of a whole chain of poets earlier than Iiesiod and Homer : 
Olen, Linus, Philammon, Eumolpns, Musceus, and other legen- 
dary singers of prehistoric Greece. Fragments of Orpheus' 
writings were current in old Hellas ; and if the thought of 
collecting and publishing them arose only in the age of the 
Peisistratidse, the same is true, likewise, of the Homeric poems. 
Onomacritus undertook the task ; and a remarkable passage of 
Herodotus shows that " prophecies'' formed, at least, a part of 
the Orphic legends. We quote from (" Polymnia," vi.) : " Ono- 



RELIGION m PELASGIC GREECE. 



293 



macritus was an Athenian, a soothsayer, and dispenser of the 
oracles of Musoeus — a branch of Orphic lore. The Peisistratidse 
went np to Susa (with him), having first reconciled their 
former enmity. For Onomacritus .had been banished from 
Athens by Hipparchus, son of Peisistratns, having been de- 
tected by Lasus the Hermionian in the very act of interpolat- 
ing among the oracles of Musseus, one importing that the 
islands lying off Lemnos would disappear beneath the sea ; 
wherefore Hipparchus banished him, although he had before 
been very familiar with him. But at that time, having gone 
up (to Susa) with them, being reconciled, whenever he came 
into the presence of the King (Xerxes), as the Peisistratidas 
spoke of him in very high terms, he recited some of the Oracles. 
If, however, there were among these oracles, any that portended 
misfortunes to the barbarians, of these he made no mention ; 
but selecting such as were most favorable, he said it was fated 
that the Hellespont should be bridged over by a Persian, de- 
scribing the march. Thus he continually excited the king, 
rehearsing oracles, as did the Peisistratidaa and Aleuadee, in 
support of their opinions." 

This passage alone would suffice to prove that, long before 
Herodotus, there were poems, hymns, oracles, attributed to 
Musseus. It is certain now that Orpheus' poems formed the 
best part of the collection. If Onomacritus, the editor, could 
be guilty of interpolating those ancient writings, there were, 
at the time, critics who could find out the literary forgery ; 
and the forgery itself shows the real existence of earlier writ- 
ings, the actual subject of interpolation. 

The nature of these poems is, moreover, revealed yet further 
by the well-established relation of Orphic and Pythagorean doc- 
trines and associations. Both brotherhoods of Orpheus and 
Pythagoras continued to flourish down to a comparative late 
age. The fragments collected by Onomacritus were used in the 
reunions and festivities of both. The doctrine of metem- 



294' 



GENTILISM. 



psychosis was admitted fully in botli. 'And as the Pytha- 
goreans are known to have professed opinions on the subject 
of the Godhead far in advance of then- polytheistic age, we 
do not see how the same could be denied of Orphic doctrine. 
It is true that the Thracian bard is strongly suspected of hav- 
ing given rise to the subsequent mythology of the Greeks ; so 
that, should these suspicions be founded, Homer and Hesiod 
would not have been the first poets " to give names to the 
gods," as Herodotus thought. But it is known that the pro- 
fes ion of belief in one Supreme God could be allied in those 
early times with a superstitious leaning towards inferior deities. 
The Vedas themselves became impregnated with monstrous 
errors, which gave rise to the degrading polytheism of the 
actual Hindoos. Hence originated, as we have before stated, 
the reform originated by Zoroaster in Bactriana. 

The most remarkable analogy between Orpheus and Pytha- 
goras is the institution of mysteries in the associations they 
founded. Orpheus, whom Pythagoras merely followed, was, 
in fact, chiefly a mystagogue. He taught men to believe that 
expiation was recpiired by sinful human nature, and initiation 
into his secret rites was the proper means of expiation. These 
rites he was said to have brought from abroad, probably from 
Egypt ; and he was thus considered by many as the real 
founder in Greece of the Eleusinian mysteries. Much uncer- 
tainty prevails, however, on this subject, in spite of the many 
researches which have been pursued in this century and the 
last. Nevertheless it seems to be certain that the Egyptian 
and Greek orgies exerted, at first, a salutary influence on mo- 
rality, by giving more distinctness to the dogma of the soul's 
immortality ; and, for many ages, men imagined they could not 
" secure their salvation," as we should say, and acquire a safe 
and easy conscience, without undergoing the process of initia- 
tion. We know, it is true, that the whole of these mysterious 
ceremonials degenerated into a mass of corruption • and the 



RELIGION IK PELASGIC GREECE. 



295 



Fathers of the first three centuries, St. Clement of Alexandria 
chiefly, spoke with due emphasis on the subject. This was not, 
however, the case for a long time, , and the only objection 
Cicero could make in his age agahist the Elusinian mys- 
teries, which he highly praised, was their celebration" at 
night, on account of the moral danger incurred by women and 
young girls in the promiscuous crowd of people admitted to 
witness the exoteric ceremonies. But it is clear how Orpheus 
contributed powerfully to form the primitive religion of 
Greece ; and how, at first, that religion partook of a character 
akin to that of eastern and southern countries. 

Of his travelling into Egypt, Diodorus Siculus speaks posi- 
tively (Book iv., Chap. 25) ; and the passage has so instructive 
a bearing on our present argument, that we think we cannot do 
better than quote it : 

" Orpheus, already an adept in science, and instructed chiefly 
in theological lore, went into Egypt, where he increased his 
stock of knowledge, so that he became the first among Gre- 
cians, in point of ability, in expiatory rites and theological 
science, as he was already the most expert in poetry and music." 

And in Book i., Chap. 23, the same author gives some more 
details on the subject, not unimportant to the subject we have 
in hand : 

"Those who pretend that the god Osiris — the Greek 
Dionysus — was born at Thebes in Boeotia from Jove and 
Semele, are mistaken ; for it is in Egypt that Orpheus re- 
ceived himself the rites of initiation, and participated in the 
mysteries of Dionysus — Osiris ; and being friendly to the race 
of Cadmus (settled in Boeotia), he transferred there the history 
of this god, and the rites of expiation connected with his mys- 
teries, in order to please them. And the vulgar, ignorant of 
these facts, wished merely to make the god one of their own 
race, and thus rushed to be initiated in ceremonies which they 
thought were native to their country." 



296 



GENTILISM. 



Of the prophetic and mantic art attributed to the Thracian 
bard, we have already spoken ; and we narrated how Onoma- 
critns subsequently tried to interpolate the Orphic pro- 
phecies and was pimished for it. This establishes a new an- 
alogy between Orpheus and the Egyptian Hermes, whose books 
contained likewise predictions, one of which announcing that, 
" at some future day, the bones of martyrs would take posses- 
sion of the empty temples consecrated at first to the Egyptian 
gods," was believed by St. Augustine to have been a true pro- 
phecy, uttered by the genius of evil against its own inclina- 
tion. 

The «onclusion, at all events, to be drawn from the facts 
thus ascertained by Karl Ottfried Miiller is, that the Orphic 
books are far earlier than the third and 'fourth centuries of our 
era ; and that, long previous to the absurd mythology of the 
bright period of Greece, a religious system existed in the coun- 
try which the noble minds of Pythagoras and his associated 
brethren made the groundwork of their own worship and philo- 
sophy. Unfortunately, that system merged very early in pan- 
theism, and tainted the highest conceptions of the oldest sages 
with the all-absorbing errors of the " Great Pan " — the Great- 
All. But this is another resemblance with both Hindostan and 
Egypt, and a new proof of an ancient connection between the 
three countries. And it supplies another confirmatory testi- 
mony of the statement of 'the Book of "Wisdom so often al- 
luded to. 

In the time of Plato anthropomorphist mythology was so prev- 
alent, that even this great man could scarcely understand the 
archaic language of Orpheus, of whom he speaks frequently. 
He quotes him in the " Cratylus" as one of the first inventors of 
the " generation of the gods " out of the Ocean. In " Ion " he 
treats chiefly of his talent as a musician and a rhapsodist. In 
" The Laws" (Book viii., Chap. 1), when it is question of the 
education of youth, he deprecates the custom of having the 



RELIGION IN PELASGIC GREECE. 



297 



woi'Ijs of all sorts of poets placed in tlieir hands, to be learned 
by heart and sung. He requires a strict choice to be made of 
such poetic compositions ; and he would like that only sacred 
poems, dedicated to the gods, scattering justly blame and 
praise, with moderation, on the actions of men — such as those 
of Tkamyris and Orpheus — should be used for such a holy pur- 
pose as educating the young. Every one knows how, in " The 
Republic " (Book hi., Chap. 9), he refuses to admit those 
authors who excite the interest of readers for what is evil as 
well as for what is good. " The author," he says, " who is 
able by his talent to become everything and picture everything, 
if he was to come to our State, and wish to circulate among us 
his poems, we should respect him as a wonderful and pleasant 
person, but should refuse to allow him to stay with us ; and, 
taking him by the hand, we should lead him on his way to 
some other city, after having poured scented oil on his head, 
and crowned him with a chaplet of flowers." 

Commentators have agreed in considering Homer himself to 
have been the poet alluded to. But about Orpheus, Plato, as 
we saw, entertained very different sentiments. We do not 
know if it was from the Orphic books, or from the conversa- 
tions he certainly had with Egyptian priests, that the friend of 
Socrates received several points of doctrine contained in his 
celebrated "Timasus;" one in particular, adverted to in sev- 
eral passages of the dialogue, but expressed with emphasis at 
its close : " Our discourse about the Universe has reached its 
conclusion. We have seen it not only containing, and full of, 
mortal and immortal animals, but itself forming a visible ani- 
mal, embracing things perceived by our sight, a sensible god, 
image of the intelligible, the greatest, best, and most perfect — 
this one only-begotten Cosmos." This, our readers know, is 
purely Egyptian, and a somewhat crude repetition of a much 
more poetical idea of the Vedas. Did it come, we repeat again, 
from Orpheus? Plato has not positively said where he bor- 



298 



GENTILISM. 



rowed the idea, which certainly contains nothing purely Hel- 
lenic. 

V. 

The reader will not fail to have observed the difficulties 
which surround the question under consideration. The links 
which connect Greece with the East appear so often entangled, 
confused, and even broken, that the elucidation of the primitive 
religion of the Greeks seems often a hopeless task; and we 
ought not to think it strange, since the Hellenes themselves 
perceived it, felt it, and were unable to account for it. There 
is, on this subject, a well-known passage in the " TimaBus," 
often cpioted in part by modern writers, although its full signifi- 
cance cannot be gathered except from the entire passage. It 
is as follows. We give the far too literal translation of Henry 
Davis, in Bonn's edition : 

" In Egypt, in the Delta, at the summit of it, is the Saitic 
nome whose chief city is Sais .... It has a presiding divinity, 
whose name in Egyptian is Nei'h, which, they say, corresponds 
with the Greek Athene ,' and the people profess to be great 
friends of the Athenians .... Solon said, that, on his arrival 
thither, he was honorably received ; and especially on his in- 
quiring about old t'mes of those priests who possessed superior 
knowledge in such matters, he perceived that neither himself 
nor any of the Greeks (so to speak), had any antiquarian knowl- 
edge at all. And once desirous of inducing the priests to nar- 
rate their ancient stories, he undertook to describe those events 
which had formerly happened among us in days of yore — those 
about the first Phoroneus and Niobe, and again after the deluge 
of Deucalion and Pyrrha (as described by the mythologists) .... 
paying due attention to the different ages in which these events 
are said to have occurred — on which one of the oldest priests 
exclaimed, " Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always children, and 



RELIGION IN PELASGIC GEEECE. 



299 



aged Greeks there are none." Solon, on hearing this, replied, 
" How can you say this ?" . To whom the priest, " Yon are 
youths in intelligence ; for you hold no ancient opinions de- 
rived from remote tradition, nor any system of discipline that 
can boast of a hoary old age : and the cause of this is the mul- 
titude and variety of destructions that have been, and will be, 
undergone by the human race ; the greater indeed arising from 
fire and water, others of less importance from ten thousand 
other contingencies. The story, for instance, that is current 
among you, that Phaeton, the offspring of the Sun, attempting 
to drive his father's chariot, and not being able to keep the 
right track, burnt up the surface of the earth, and perished 
himself, .... in point of fact refers to a declination of the 
heavenly bodies revolving round the earth, and indicates that, 
at certain long intervals of time, the earth's surface is de- 
stroyed by mighty fires. When this occurs, then those who 
dwell either on mountains, or in lofty and dry places, perish in 
greater numbers than those dwelling near rivers, or on the sea- 
shore : whereas, to us the Nile is not only our safeguard from 
all other, troubles, but liberates and preserves us also from this 
in particular. And, again, when the gods, to purify the earth, 
deluge its surface with water, then the herdsmen and shepherds 
on the mountains are preserved in safety, while the inhabitants 
of your cities are hurried away to the sea by the impetuosity 
of the rivers .... Besides all the noble, great, or otherwise 
distinguished achievements, performed either by ourselves, or 
by you, or elsewhere, of which we have heard the report — all 
these have been engraven in our temples in very remote times, 
and preserved to the present day ; while on the contrary, with 
you and all other nations, they are only just committed to writ- 
ing, and all other modes of transmission which states require 
— when again, at the usual period, a current from heaven 
rushes on them like a pestilence, and leaves the survivors 
among you destitute of literary annals .... and thus you be- 



300 



GENTILISM. 



come young again as at first, knowing nothing of the events of 
ancient times, either in our country or yours." 

The old Egyptian priest had certainly stated a most evident 
fact : That the Greeks held no ancient opinions derived from 
remote traditions." They were not a traditional people, but 
rationalistic. The reason he gave for this will scarcely satisfy 
the modem reader; yet owing to its quaintness and plausibility 
for an Egyptian, we have given it here a place. But if such 
was really the case in the early age of Solon — this absence of 
traditions — how much more was it true of more recent times? 
In the time of Plato, everything ancient, we may say, had van- 
ished ; or only precious fragments handed down by the Orphic 
School and the Pythagorean Society remained, whose meaning 
was altogether forgotten, buried as it was beneath the rubbish 
of mythology. Rubbish we mean, not in a literary point of 
view ; but as compared with the sublime, rational, and consist- 
ent scheme of revealed religion. As a product of tbe imagina- 
tion, it was anything but rubbish. To the Greeks, the mythol- 
ogy born of the imagination of Homer had such a fascinating 
power, that they were bound fast in the brilliant folds of that 
splendid superstition. The witchery of it is so charming that 
even Christian writers have felt its power ; and we shall pres- 
ently find men of note speaking of it as the true cause of all 
Greek culture, and shall have to reply to their arguments. 

Meanwhile, we have a few more considerations to urge on the 
part of our subject which has already for some time occupied 
our attention. 

There is no doubt, that if it is enveloped yet in still greater 
obscurity to us than to the Hellenes of the age of Plato and 
even of Solon, nevertheless, the ingenuity, deep researches, and 
profound criticism of modern investigators, such as Karl Ott- 
fried Miiller, have thrown on those primitive times a light 
which they did not possess. We are, at least, obliged to admit, 
for that early period, a real superiority in point of strong intel- 



KELIGION IN PELASGIC GKEECE. 



301 



lect and morality over the ages that followed. Religion, man- 
ners, domestic institutions present many traits similar to those 
of India and ancient Egypt. The Pelasgians were, above all, 
agriculturists, as were the early Hindoos. They spread, like- 
their progenitors, over continents, and were not much addicted 
to the sea, which they merely crossed for the purpose of colo- 
nization. They had the Yedic " Arbhu" (Orpheus) for their 
initiator in the rites of expiation, as the Hindoos had the 
Brahmins for a like initiation as described in the Institutes of 
Menu. We have seen his " sacred image," (Orpheus') sculptured 
by Pelasgic hands and preserved to our very days. Wherever 
they spread, the Hellenic race, which replaces them, spread 
likewise : In Asia Minor, in Southern Italy, in the territories 
around the Euxine, and even north of it, as well as in Attica, 
Boeotia, and the whole of Hellas. Max Miiller, and all modern 
Sanscrit scholars, tell us that they came from Central Asia, 
that they are the Javanas of the Vedic literature, and we say 
that they are the Jdvans of Genesis. They must, therefore, 
have brought to ' their new country the idea of " Brahma " 
(neuter), indistinct, it is true, and scarcely to be recognized, 
owing to the incredible hardship of their migration ; yet finally 
taking a shape, announced by Orpheus as the " Deathless One," 
" our mother's sire," etc., who, in Hellenic times, became 
Zeus, not the son of Chronos, but the Zeus anterior to mythol- 
ogy, of whom Plato spoke thus in his " Cratylus " : " In 
reality the name of Zeus is, as it were, a sentence ; and persons 
dividing it into two parts, some of us make use of one part, 
and some of another ; for some call him Zqv, and some Acq. 
But these parts united into one, exhibit the nature of the 
God, which, as we have said, a name ought and should be able 
to do. For there is no one who is more the cause of living 
(Z'fjv), both to us and everything else, than He who is the 
Ruler and King of all. It follows, therefore, that this God is 
rightly named, through whom life is present to all living beings." 



302 



GEJSTTILISM. 



The translator of the dialogue, George Barges, adds in a 
note : " From this passage of Plato were perhaps derived the 
Pseudo-Orphic verses, quoted by Joannes Diaconus, etc : ' Zeus 
is the beginning of all things. For Zeus has given and gene- 
rated animals, and men call him Zf/v, and also Alg ; because 
all things were fabricated through Him ; and He is the one 
Father of all things, both beasts and men.' 1 " 

On this we remark, and the investigation of this passage is 
most important : 

1st. The translation here given is scarcely pointed enough ; 
the verses of the Pseudo-Orphic hymn are in Greek : 

"Eotiv (J// ttuvtdv dpx^l Zevg, Zevg yap edioice, 
Zud t' tytvvrjaev -nal Zrjv' clvtov naXeovgi, 
Kal Ata r'ijd', oti dij did tovtov anavra tetvkt&i. 
Elg 6t narjjp ovTog ttuvtuv, Or/pcov re [ipoT&VTE. 

" Zeus is the beginning of all things. For Zeus has given, 
And generated living beings; thus men call him Zrjv. 

They call Hiui also Aig, since through Plim (did tovtov) all things are 

made. 

He is the One Father of all, both beasts and men." 

The importance of these corrections is obvious. 

2d. We cannot understand. how the above-quoted hymn was 
perhaps derived, as Mr. Purges remarks, from the previous 
passage of Plato. "We think, rather, that the text of the great 
and good friend of Socrates was positively derived from this 
very Orphic hymn. And for the following reasons : Plato, 
after having said that " the name of Zeus is a sentence, and 
people dividing it into two parts, some made use of one 
part and called him Zvv, and some of another, and call him 
Aig" seems to announce that he will give the meaning of both, 
because " these parts united into one, exhibit the nature of 
the God." Yet he quite forgets to explain the second part, Aig. 
He is diffuse on the first, Zrjv ; and, on reading his " Cratylus," 



RELIGION IN PELASGIC GEEECE. 



303 



the reader is surprised to find, that, in what follows, not a word 
is said of the meaning of the second : Aig . But, among the 
immense number of fragments of ancient lore, kept and pre- 
served by more modern writers, a poem of Orpheus is found, 
quoted by Joannes Diaconus, in which the same object is 
professed, namely : to explain the meaning of Zeus ; and the 
omission of Plato is fully supplied by a precious line giving the 
meaning of Aiq. What can be the conclusion for a critic? 
This, certainly : Plato shows everywhere a very slight acquaint- 
ance with the true Orpheus, although he often mentions his 
name. He meets, however, with a few words which strike him ; 
they are incomplete, and, as he never had the good fortune to 
see the whole poem of the old bard, he comments on these few 
words. But, as the line including the explanation of the mean- 
ing of Alt; is wanting in the snatch which he possesses, he does 
not dare, through religious feeling, to furnish an interpretation 
of his own. Had it not been the name of Zeus, he might 
have tbought himself competent, of his own authority, to ex- 
plain it. Had it been the name of some inferior god, he might 
have treated the subject with levity; as he did, directly after, 
in the same dialogue, when it was question only of the names 
of Hera, of Poseidon, of Pluto, and of all the others, on which 
he took an evident delight in pouring ridicule and contempt. 
But he would have considered it sacrilegious to speak in the 
same strain of " Him who is the Ruler and King of all," as he 
expressed it. Thus the omission in Plato, shows him, in our 
opinion, to have lived at a later period than the Orphic verses 
which he alludes to in part. 

3d. Plato, in explaining the name of Zeus, and discussing 
the first part of it, Zfjv, says only that He is thus called, be- 
cause " through Him life is present to all living beings." But 
the Greek of Orpheus has a much stronger meaning. It is, 
eyew7]oe t& fua, — he generated liming animals ; and we say that 

the author of the Orphic verses could not have derived this 
21 



304 GENTILISM. 

from the passage of Plato, but that, more probably, Plato took 
it from some imperfect copy of the verses. The words of the 
founder of the Academy do not make any mention of " gene- 
ration," but merely assert that Zeus is "present" to all living 
beings. No interpreter could be so bold as to introduce the 
meaning contained in lyevvrjas. 

Plato, on the contrary, in the supposition that he possessed 
some of the Orphic lines, had a strong reason for toning down 
tlu ir expressions, and giving them an Hellenic aspect. He did 
so by the phrase he used. His readers could not possibly have 
understood the direct "generation" of the visible world from 
the supreme and immaterial God ; hence he had to bring his 
words to the intellectual capacity of his 1 readers. Orpheus, 
on the contrary, had the whole cosmogonic system of Egypt, 
and even that of India, in support of his meaning. To render 
this clearer still, we will remind our readers of the concluding 
passage of the " Timfeus," quoted above. We have already 
remarked on it that Plato certainly took the idea from the 
Egyptians — the whole dialogue is supposed to express the 
Egyptian explanation of creation. But in the passage alluded 
to, which is certainly one of the strongest, if not altogether the 
strongest, in all the works of Plato, as redolent altogether of 
Oriental opinion and imagery, the wise Greek philosopher has 
considerably altered the Egyptian doctrine. This made the 
" visible world " positively " the son " of the Creator ; Plato 
makes it only its " image " (elicbg). And if, in the last words 
of the passage, he calls the Cosmos " the greatest, best, most 
perfect, the one only-begotten " — novdyevy, — it is clear that the 
phrase is metaphorical, because the writer had advertently 
avoided the only word which could have made it literal, 
vibv — son, — which is the correlative of iJ-ov&yevrj. 

These observations supply a convincing proof that many 
modern mythologists are mistaken in establishing an essential 
distinction between the Greek Zeus and the Roman Jupiter. 



RELIGION EST PELASGIC GREECE. 



305 



" It is only," they say, " when the Romans began to know the 
religion and literature of Greece, that they foolishly sought to 
identify their own noble, majestic, and gravely upright Jupiter 
with the slippery, lustful, and immoral Zeus of the Greeks." 
We answer that this Zeus was the god of the degenerate Hel- 
lenes, not that of the immediate successors of the Pelasgians. 
There is no doubt that the original Jupiter of the Romans was 
altogether different from the Zeus of subsequent mythology. 
He was, as Pluvius, as Tonans, as Fulminator, as Servator, all- 
powerful over the elements ; He was all-knowing, all-provid- 
ing, the highest and the best, Optimus Maximus. As such, he 
could not be guilty of the crimes insanely attributed to him 
by mythology. Hence the idea of Jupiter was altogether a 
moral one, and he was properly thought to be the avenger of 
those vices which later ages were to condone and even to ren- 
der attractive by making them the ordinary actions of their 
chief god. Thus the primitive Jupiter of the Romans was 
really the Supreme, the Eternal, the Omnipotent. But such 
was likewise the primitive Zeus of the Greeks. From whom 
did the Romans receive the idea of their great Jupiter % Un- 
doubtedly from the Etruscans, those Pelasgians of Italy. And 
this supposed difference between Jupiter and Zeus is thus 
shown to have been merely the work of time, and the effect of 
ever-advancing degeneracy, ending in the most wretched degra- 
dation. 

We hope, therefore, that we have established to the satisfac- 
tion of the reader, that the Orphic literature cannot truly be 
called pseudo in any sense. And it follows from this that 
monotheism appears at the religious origin of Greece, affording 
thus another confirmation of the remarkable words of Professor 
Heeren : " It would be difficult, and perhaps impossible, to find 
a nation which can show no vestiges of religion ; and there 
never yet has* been, nor can there be, a nation in which the 
reverence for a superior being was but the fruit of refined 



806 



GENTILISM. 



philosophy." For religion caine to us from God by exterior 
revelation. 

There is, however, yet a slight qualification to proffer of 
what we have advanced. If we have, as is the case, really 
strong reasons for believing the passage in question to be 
truly Orphic and not Pseudo-Orphic, we have no intention of 
maintaining that the " phraseology" is undoubtedly the work 
of the Thracian bard. We speak only of the sense of the 
pas age. The "verses" may have been arranged by a subse- 
quent " literateur." The thoughts have the redolence of the 
gi inline antique, and are evidently older than Plato. This is 
all we have intended to assert. 

]3ut if purity of religion does not suppose necessarily a great 
advance in knowledge and what is called culture, it does sup- 
pose, in our opinion, a primitive revelation. And purity of 
religion is altogether incompatible with barbarism ; and the 
nations w hich have received such an incomparable boon, are 
necessarily intelligent, refined in feeling, in possession of a 
great control over nature ; in fine, truly civilized. But 
according to the common opinion, the Hellenes of the heroic 
age were mere barbarians. The Pelasgians, especially, who 
preceded them, were uncouth savages. It was, as they say, 
" the age of Cyclops and Polyphemusses." Homer himself 
has described those frightful cannibals of Sicily and the sur- 
rounding islands. 

"We assert that, however general such an opinion may be, it 
is an altogether mistaken one ; and in the same way as we 
have established, conclusively, the fact that the Hindoos of the 
Yedic times were, from the very beginning, a great and refined 
race, do we now propose to demonstrate that the original 
Hellenes — we believe them to have been Pelasgians — were not, 
at all events, savages, but were far advanced in social life, and 
endowed with noble and elevated feelings, although remarkable 
for theh truly patriarchal simplicity and unartifieial mode of 



RELIGION IS PELASGIC GREECE. 307 

living. This was precisely the character of the primitive Hin- 
doos; and we say that these are the "notes" of "primitive 
man," wherever documents have been left to know and describe 
him. 

The Pelasgians have left after them no traces whatever, 
except huge buildings and enormous ruins, in the opinion of 
those who make them a race altogether distinct from the Hel- 
lenes. According to their theory, a powerful nation, spread 
over a great part of Europe, besides a slice of Asia, has sud- 
denly disappeared to make room for another, without any 
struggle, at least, corresponding with the magnitude of the 
event. Is it probable ? Is it possible ? We confess that we 
do not believe it is. Those who do, endeavor to establish 
their point by a reference to the fact of the disappearance of 
many nations in a similar manner. They argue that, even in 
our days, the phenomenon is still manifesting itself in many 
countries. They allude evidently to the Poles, the Turks in 
Europe, etc. ; and, in the Western Hemisphere, to the North 
American Indians. We answer, that none of these facts can 
explain the disappearance of the Pelasgians ; and that the 
whole of history, ancient and modern, may be ransacked in 
vain to find anything similar. 

None of the nations, now in process of disappearance, have 
been reduced to their actual state without long ages of a pro- 
tracted struggle well known to history. And some of those 
named have not yet disappeared, nor are likely to for a long 
time to come, at all events. We defy anyone to find a case' 
parallel to the' Pelasgic phenomenon. We admit that a race 
can pass gradually into another by a true process of assimila- 
tion. But then the two races must not be altogether antago- 
nistic. And when this happens readily, we may be sure that 
they belonged originally to the same stock, which was, we 
imagine, the case with the Pelasgians and the Hellenes. To 
speak, therefore, of the social state of the first — as we do not 



308 



GENTILISM. 



possess any direct document concerning them — we must have 
recourse to the early documents of the second. Thus the ques- 
tion resolves itself into an investigation of the heroic age of 
Greece. We assert that this age was Pelasgic as well as Hel- 
lenic. Thus also thought Homer, who, as we have seen, some- 
times makes the two races identical, sometimes seems to admit 
a difference. "We remarked likewise that, most probably, Or- 
pheus was a Pelasgic Thracian hero, of whom we yet possess 
the " sacred image," one of a very few relics of Pelasgian art." x ' 
T4 r e pass 'on, therefore, to the subject of Heroic Greece. 

* Few authors have shown as much industry and care in collecting all 
the passages of ancient writers, chiefly of Homer, having reference to the 
Pelasgians, as Mr. Gladstone did in his " Juventus Mundi." He confirms 
tlie general opinion entertained of the race with respect to its wandering 
ha ita, to its agricultural jjursuits, to its peaceful disposition, and to its 
extension over Greece, Italy, and Asia Minor. Perhaps objection could 
be taken to the total want of warlike spirit ascribed to it; inasmuch as 
the universal test adopted by the Right Hon. author to determine if a 
given tribe was Pelasgic or not, is to ascertain^if, in the mention made 
of it by the ancients, it was unsuccessful in any conflict; this being a 
sure mark, according to Mr. Gladstone, that it belonged to the Pelasgic. 
But as we are chiefly concerned with the religious leanings of the race, it 
is almost exclusively to his remarks on this subject, contained in the 
" Juventus Mundi," that our attention must be directed. 

Mr. Gladstone supposes that the Pelasgians worshipped the " Nature- 
Powers," as he calls them. He is, no doubt, perfectly right, so far as his 
subject limited his investigations to the time of the Trojan war and of 
Homer. The title of the book is evidently a misnomer, if it is meant to 
indicate really primitive agts. Yet some valuable admissions are con-, 
tained in the scraps of earlier erudition occasionally met with. Thus in 
distinguishing the old Pelasgic Zeus from the more recent Olympian, 
created by Homer, he is on the right road to truth. He had already 
said (page 222), in speaking of this last anthropomorphic deity, that " He 
is the depository of the principal remnants of monotheistic and providen- 
tial ideas." And, having stated just before, that "Zeus is the meeting- 
point of the Pelasgic with the Olympian system of religion," the natural 
consequence is, that the former God was at the head of a "monotheistic 
and providential" system, and that the " Olympian," or Hellenic, system 
contained real " remnants " of it. This is all w e are contending for ; and 



RELIGION IN PELASGIC GREECE. 



309 



it may thus be asserted that the old Pelasgians did not worship only 
" Nature-Powers." 

But the author of " Juventus Mundi " is particularly skillful in showing 
how the " Olympian Zeus " of Homer had received, from the Pelasgic, 
attributes which later did not remain to Him, so that the belief of the 
Hellenes went on deteriorating from age to age. Thus as he says : " To 
Zeus, as Providence, belong both a number of separate ascriptions, and a 
* general position, which underlies the whole action of the Iliad. The 
grandeur of his attributes transcends every other composition. He is 
identified, in perhaps an hundred places of the poems, with the word 
theos, in its more abstracted signification, as Providence, or the moral 
governor of the world. He is the arbiter of war ; and he exhibits in the 
sky, on great occasions, the scales in which are weighed contending fates. 
He is the source of governing authority, and he shows his displeasure 
when it is abused. He is the distributor in general of good and evil 

among mortal •< He has the care of the guest, the suppliant, and the 

poor ; and thus his name becomes the guarantee for three relations, which 
were and are fundamental to the condition of mankind, considered with 
reference to social existence. Indeed, in this character he is himself a 
Source of Destiny, as we find from the remarkable phrase — Atbc aloa — the 
fate proceeding from Zeus.'' 

These were the grand ideas which Homer took from the former belief 
of the Pelasgians in their Supreme God. Would to Heaven the poet had 
always kept up the character of the Pelasgic Deity, and his imagination 
had not degraded such a Being by all possible human vices, as he does 
in " an hundred places of his poems." 

Of the deteriorating process " progressing " subsequently for centuries, 
a remarkable passage ought to be quoted, as it expresses so exactly what 
we have all along been endeavoring to establish. It is found at page 182 
of the Boston Ed., 1869. The author is -treating of the " Olympian system 
of Homer ": " Its character continually altered ; and altered for the worse. 
It has features which are sublime, and features which are debased. But 
the sublime features of the Olympian characters became, with the lapse 
of generations, less and less observable ; the debased ones grew more and 
more prominent. And the profoundly interesting specialities of the sev- 
eral deities, indicating their respective origins, at length became appa- 
rently imperceptible even to the Greeks themselves. No one can closely 
and carefully examine the system of Homer without a deep interest ; no 
one can find much ground for such an interest in the theological part of 
the religion of the historic period. Only its ethical ideas, and the highly 
poetic ideas connected with destiny, retain any attractive power ; and 
from the mythology these ideas are, in the later stages of the Olympian 
system, almost wholly dissociated." 



310 



GENTILISM. 



Another most interesting point of difference between the Pelasgic and 
Olympian religions, mentioned by Mr. Gladstone, is the existence of a real 
priesthood in the first, which is no more visible in the second. 

From the poems of Homer themselves, we learn that the Pelasgic tem- 
ples had all a rifievoe, or glebe for the priests. It is, in fact, a feature com- 
mon to all primitive nations. It is only the Greeks, led, it would seem, 
by the Ionian bard himself, who did not, in ancient times, adopt the cus- 
tom, which — we may mention it incidentally — is, at this moment, dis- 
carded, more or less, by all modern so-called Christian nations, in spite 
of the protests of the Catholic Church. But a glebe supposes a system 
of ministers of religion ordained for the purpose, and set apart for the 
service of God. The Hellenes, from the time of Homer downwards, for- 
got entirely so necessary a provision for the stability of religion, al- 
though the Pelasgians, their ancestors, had brought the custom from 
Asia. 

Consequently, says Mr. Gladstone again (page 182, 183) : "The won- 
der, indeed, is, not that the Olympian religion should have failed to resist 
the corrosion of change, but that it should have been able, in any manner, 
to retain its identity. Devoid, as it was, of all authority, and even of 
the allegation of authority, for its origin, and not only unsustained, but 
belied, by the witness of surrounding nations, it probably had little less 
of unity than such as it derived from the great bard of the nation and 
from its imaginative splendor; while it had none of the guarantees, real, 
even if partial, which are afforded either by books known and recog- 
nized as sacred, or by a compact and i)ermauent hierarchy, dating, or 

professing to date, from the beginning of the system Neither was 

the priest, as such, a significant personage in Greece at any period, nor 
had the priest of any one place or deity, any organic connection with the 
priest of any other ; so that, if there were priests, yet there was not a 
priesthood." 

A last observation, but a very important one, is derived from the list 
of words which must be Pelasgian, and of which Mr. Gladstone furnishes 
abundant examples. As no Pelasgic inscription that we know of has so 
far been found, the Right Hon. author justly remarks, that the La ins 
being surely derived originally from the race, the words common both to 
the Latin and Greek languages must come from the primitive source, and 
be Pelasgic, excepting the few Greek words introduced in course of time, 
and well known to philologists. But it is extremely remarkable that, 
except the vocable 6e6c and one or two others which belong both to the 
Latin and Greek, all the words expressing religious ideas are completely 
distinct in both idioms. From which very strange fact Mr. Gladstone 
concludes, that " in one case, or in both, there must have been a great 
displacement of the Pelasgic vocabulary. And as the Roman religion 



KELIGION est pelasgic geeece. 



311 



was far more Pelasgian than the Greek, it is probable that this displace- 
ment, if it occurred in one only of the two peninsulas, occurred in 
Greece." 

The question naturally arises, after reading this astounding statement, 
Was Homer, the founder and absolute maker of Hellenism, gui'.ty of 
changing the language of the Pelasgians, in order to pervert more easily 
their religion ? We could not venture to answer this question in the 
affirmative without further proofs, as the change of expression in religious 
matters might have happened before him. . 



CHAPTER VI. 



INTRODUCTION OF IDOLATRY IN HEROIC GREECE. 
I. 

We are met at the very threshold of our investigations in 
this new portion of our subject, by the almost universal opin- 
ion of writers on Greece, at least of those immediately pre- 
ceding our age, that the heroic times of Hellas were barbarous. 
How many horrible facts have not the semi-fabulous annals of 
Pelops, of Atreus, of Laius, left on record % Was not the age of 
Hercules an age of monsters \ The Greeks themselves, in their 
writings of a later age, have taken an apparent delight in prov- 
ing that then* ancestors were worse than barbarians* The 
dramatists, particularly, have found, in the old annals of their 
race, horrors enough to fill their poems. To present the same 
old subjects on our modern stage, the best poets of France and 
of Italy have had to tone down considerably the dark colors of 
the picture left by Hellenic authors. No refined audience 
could now tolerate an exact reproduction of the great master- 
pieces of Greece. The attempt has, we believe, been made in 
Germany ; we do not know with what success. But as nothing 
has been said of the project for many years past, we presume 
that the Germans are no greater admirers of Greek mythic 
hoiTors than the rest of mankind. 

We propose to show that the Heroic age of Hellas was not 
the barbarous age it has been represented as being by its own 
writers, as well as by modern authors ; and that these produc- 
es) 



HEEOIC GREECE. 



313 



tions of the Greek stage do not give us the real* picture of those 
primitive times. 

Where can we find that true picture ? In the long poems of 
Homer, chiefly his Odyssey ; in many fragments of old poets, 
which have reached us through more modern authors ; in num- 
berless passages of the first historians of Greece, where the sim- 
plicity of primitive manners is yet preserved in many charm- 
ing anecdotes, and long stories of enchanting artlessness. The 
dramatists intended to strike terror, and invented circmn stances 
which were only creatures of their imagination. They took, 
moreover, a few facts which they painfully elaborated into mon- 
strous legends of crime and horror. It is not thus we can ob- 
tain a true delineation of the manners of those times. Let us 
try to find out what was in fact the moral and social situation 
of Greece at the time of the Heraclidas and the Argonauts. 

We are met at the very outset of our inquiry by the impor- 
tant objection : Are Homer and Herodotus, on whose testi- 
mony we intend chiefly to rely, safe guides in a cool and mat- 
ter-of-fact research ? Is not the first a " poet," that is to say, 
an inventor of things which never happened % And is not 
Herodotus a composer of legends, a gossiping historian, fit only 
for children in the nursery ? Homer is altogether untrustwor- 
thy when he speaks of religion and cosmogony. As he under- 
stood nothing of either, he invented what he did not know, and 
was, by his inventions, the chief cause of the subsequent errors 
of his countrymen. But when he speaks of things which he 
knew, either by eye-sight or by sure tradition, can a safer author 
be found, in ancient or modern times % Who has ever described 
more truly the phenomena of nature, or the marvels of art 
which he saw % Is not every word a true pencilling, and the 
whole thing a picture ? As the rising and the setting of the 
sun, the howling of the tempest, and the warbling of birds, 
the colors of the rainbow, and the darkness of night, are to us 
the same as they were to him, do we not always admire the 



314 



GENTILISM. 



fidelity to Nature as well as the graphic power with which he 
describes natural phenomena? And when it is question of 
things, social and domestic, which he witnessed in his time 
among his countrymen ; when he speaks, for instance, of the 
occupations of women in a Pelasgic or in a Hellenic house, of 
the sitting of judges at the gates of cities, of the public games, 
the wrestling of athletes, the swift running of chariots, the 
trappings of horses ; when he describes the public acts of relig- 
ion and the festivities of citizens, the details of sacrifices, the 
dancing and music, etc., etc., are we not sure that all those 
things happened exactly as he delineated them? 

So, too, when it is question of facts happening in his time, 
or well ascertained by tradition, he must be acknowledged as 
an historian, for his definite object was to record facts. He 
is not an epic "poet," like Virgil, who, living in an artificial 
age, and after Aristotle had given the artistic rules of a work 
of " fiction," wrote his JEneid as a novelist in our age writes 
his fanciful tale. 

It in nothing resembles a historic novel. Indeed, in the 
time of Homer nothing of the kind can be supposed. Prob- 
ably no one yet among the Greeks had ever written in prose. 
Verse was the only means of conveying intelligence by writ- 
ing ; and whenever an author wrote in verse, he intended to 
state what he thought was true, and not what he " fancied." 
Hence, Homer was considered by the ancients as a true histo- 
rian. Strabo, in the two first books of his geography, endeav- 
ors to show that he was a most reliable historian, geographer, 
and naturalist. And so, indeed, he was for his age, and those 
which immediately followed it. We are sure, consequently, 
that when he describes manners and social customs, they were 
those of his time, and he merely published what he saw. And 
as no writer ever equalled him in point of accuracy in his de- 
scriptions, we can altogether rely on him as on the most faith- 
ful delineator of those early ages. 



HEROIC GREECE. 



315 



The same now must be said of Herodotus, of whom, how- 
ever, Strabo entertained a very different opinion. For a long 
time the " Father of History " was considered only as a won- 
der-monger, hunting up ridiculous stories, to idealize them in 
his imperishable style, and catch gullible people, as children 
are caught by fairy-tales. But after the long labors of critics 
and investigators after truth, it is no longer possible to think 
thus of the enchanting Halicarnassian. All now admit that 
what he " saw," he faithfully described ; that things happening 
in his age, or immediately before, found in him an exact annal- 
ist ; that what any respectable tradition handed down as true, 
he transmitted to us in its native simplicity ; and that when he 
"misleads" us, it is not through any intention of " deceiving," 
but because he was hiinself misled by the " tale-bearers " of 
his day. Nay, many of his assertions which seemed incredible 
at first, and were, for that reason, .alleged by many as proofs of 
his untrustworthiness, have since been verified. We are con- 
fident, therefore, that whenever Herodotus describes any event, 
impregnated with the perfume of patriarchal anticurity, he is 
but passing on to us the sweet fragrance of primitive times. 
And he could not do this unless he had received from previous 
enchanters the aroma of an age which had, already, in his 
time, passed away for ever. 

II. 

The first phenomenon which strikes us, when we take 
a cursory glance over Greek territory, is similar to that which 
presented itself in India and Egypt. Indeed, the division 
of the territory is yet a deal more remarkable in the former 
than in the latter. We find, in the heroic age, the country 
cut up into an infinite number of small States, each with 
its peculiar physiognomy, yet enjoying all the same opinions, 
customs to a great extent, and chiefly social and domestic 



316 



GENTILISM. 



manners. Homer, in his descriptions, represents all the tribes 
as equal in point of civilization. We do not remark between 
the eastern and western parts of Hellas, between Attica, for 
instance, and ^Etolia, the difference so remarkable in a later 
age, when the Athenians were so polished and the ^Etolians 
so rude. According to him, the Thessalian differs in nothing 
from the inhabitant of Laconia. They all speak the same 
language, have the same dress, the same weapons, the same 
domestic customs — are, in short, evidently the same people ; 
yet they are each strongly marked with broad special clan 
characteristics. Thessaly is divided, in the time of Homer, 
into ten different small States, each with its own ruler ; and the 
inhabitant of each boasts of his own small country as if it was 
the greatest in the world. In the Peloponnesus we find five 
different kingdoms, besides Arcadia ; and one of them, Elis, is 
governed by no less than four provincial "kings, as an Irish an- 
nalist would say. Hellas itself, the centre of Greece, is a per- 
fect hot-bed of principalities. They are as numerous as the 
cities themselves ; and among them the Athenians do not 
claim any superior right of preeminence to that of the most 
insignificant of those obscure clans. As to the islands of the 
^Egean, and other seas, how could the smallest rock emerging 
from the deep do less than enjoy its own king or ruler ? 
Ulysses was a most powerful prince, because, besides his native 
Ithaca, he claimed a right over Zacinthus and Cephallene. So 
completely was division in clans an established institution 
among them that when the Ionians left Achaia in Pelopon- 
nesus, driven away by new invaders who took the name of 
Achseans, and established themselves on the western coast of 
Asia Minor, they naturally " formed themselves into twelve 
cities," as Herodotus relates (I. 145), " and refused to admit 
more ; because when they dwelt in Peloponnesus, there were 
twelve divisions of them, as now there are twelve divisions 
of the Achaeans who drove away the Ionians.'' This short 



HEROIC GREECE. 



317 



passage of the Father of History lets considerable light into 
those early times, and proves conclusively that men had not 
yet arrived at the modern notion that to be happy and prosper- 
ous, a nation must consist of at least fifty millions of people. 

This fact of the Ionian colonization of Asia Minor is not 
exceptional. Herodotus, throughout his first book (Clio), 
shows it to have been a common one in those ages. Thus in 
§ 149 he enumerates eleven cities founded in Asia Minor by the 
iEolians as centres of new tribes, the twelfth, Smyrna, having 
been taken away from them. The number twelve seems to 
have been a* sacred number in those clays. It is another evi- 
dence of the extent to which the spirit of clanship was carried 
amongst them that they were slow even to form confederacies 
of clans. They were satisfied with building a temple ; the one 
used by the Ionians was called Pcmionium, where they sent 
their deputies once a year to regulate the general affairs of the 
tribes. But Thales, as Herodotus relates (I. 170), having "ad- 
vised the Ionians to constitute one general (permanent) council 
in Teos, which stands in the centre of Ionia, and that the rest 
of the inhabited cities should nevertheless be governed as in- 
dependent States," his advice was rejected. It is as interesting 
as strange to hear a philosopher like Thales, the oldest in 
Greece, propose a government exactly similar to that of the 
United States, and to find his proposition rejected, probably as 
opposed to the rights of the States (or cities), which might be 
infringed upon by this kind of Washington government at 
Teos. Yet if they were jealous of their rights, they were not 
" republicans." They were strong " monarchists." They could 
not understand any government but that of one man. Hence, 
Homer expressed but the general opinion of the heroic age 
when he made Ulysses exclaim : 

" Ovk dyadbv iroXv/coipavirj ' tig aoipavog earw, 
Elg (iaaiXevg, i> 6uke Kpovov traig ayK,vXo\xr\Ttu> 
2Krjnrpov t' fjdk OkfiLgrag, Iva o<pLOiv efifiaoiXevrj." 



318 



GENTILISM. 



" Away with democracy ! let there be one ruler, 
One king, to whom the son of deep-scheming Kronos 
Has handed over the sceptre and right, that he may govern others." 

Thus the doctrine of the " divine right " is not a modern 
notion, and did not originate with King James I. We must 
not be supposed, however, to be advocating that doctrine. We 
merely describe the sentiment of the patriarchal times of which 
we treat. It is certainly remarkable that Greece, which, later on 
in her history, originated every conceivable form of democratic 
government, and was the first to proclaim — in Athens chiefly — 
the rule of the many, was, in the earliest period of*her history, 
so strongly wedded to the idea of monarchy, whose sway, how- 
ever, it is true, extended only over the contracted limits of a 
territory a few miles square. " We meet then," as Heeren 
says (Ancient Greece, Heroic age), " with no governments but 
those of princes and kings ; there were then no republics ; and 
yet republicanism was eventually to decide the political charac- 
ter of Greece. These monarchical constitutions, if that name 
may be applied to them, were rather the outlines of constitu- 
tions than regular, finished forms of government. They were 
the consequence of the most ancient condition of the nation, 
when either riding families sprung up in the several tribes, or 
the leaders of foreign colonies had known how to secure to 
themselves and their posterity the government over the nar 
tives." 

We must, however, generalize these explanations of the 
Professor of Gottingen, and say that " they were the conse- 
quence of the primitive state of man, who began by a family, 
and passed directly to the condition of tribe under the rule of 
the patriarch." Thus the clan becomes a sure sign of " prim- 
eval man," because, as we have before stated, " mankind be- 
gan by clanship ;" and the origin of Greece furnishes another 
proof of the axiom.- But the following remarks of Heeren, 
a page farther down, are worthy of note, as they seem to de- 



HEBOIC GKEECE. 



319 



scribe to the letter the Ireland of Ante-Scandinavian times : 
" Esteem for the ruling families (say for the heads of the 
Septs) secured to them the government ; but their power was 
not strictly hereditary. Princes were not much more than the 
first among their peers The son had commonly the pre- 

cedence over others in the succession ; but his claim av?.s 
measured by his personal qualifications for the station. It was 
his first duty to lead in war ; and he could not do this unless 
he was himself distinguished for courage and strength. His 
privileges in peace were not great. He called together the 
popidar assembly, which was chiefly, if not exclusively, com- 
posed of the older and more distinguished citizens. Here the 
king had his OAvn seat ; the ensign of his dignity was a sceptre 

or staff, etc His superiority (in material circumstances) 

consisted in a piece of land, and a larger part of the booty. 
Excepting this, he derived his support from his own posses- 
sions and the produce of his fields and herds. The preserva- 
tion of his dignity required an almost unbounded hospitality, 
etc." Thus the clan system appears to be so natural, and, on 
that account, precise, that it presents absolutely the same fea- 
tures in all countries, all climates, and all times. 

But in such state of society was not man an ignorant,, rude, 
and uncouth barbarian ; and is not this the general opinion 
scholars have ever had of the heroic age of Greece % 'No true 
scholar can entertain such an opinion. The precise and numer- 
ous details contained in classic authors, which testify to a high 
state of knowledge, and suppose a hapj>y and tranquil social 
condition, make it impossible. 

Take, for example, the excessively numerous and prosperous 
populations which existed in those times. The intelligent 
reader of Homer is struck by what the poet says of the num- 
berless cities which then embellished Greece. And these were 
not open hamlets, composed of a few huts for a far-scattered 

population. They had walls ; the gates were generally adorned 
22 



320 



GENTILISM. 



with towers ; the houses formed streets, well laid out and broad ; 
yet the dwellings were not contiguous and crowding on each 
other, hut they had in front a 'court, and a garden in the rear. 
All that our modem ideas of comfort have since realized in the 
rural towns of our most prosperous States, existed already in 
Hellas. The faithful delineations of the old wandering hard, 
who had visited most of the countries he described, or knew by 
report what took place before him, cannot leave us any doubt 
of the correctness of his sketches. Later on, in the refined age 
of Pericles, there were, no doubt, finer buildings, more exqui- 
site works of art, a greater abundance of metallic or marble 
statues. There was not, we are sure, more prosperity and real 
comfort. In each city a large market square, adorned with 
porticos and simple Doric columns, was the common place of 
meeting for the citizens. There they lived in the open air, 
and spent the greater part of the day ; not yet meddling in the 
affairs of the commonwealth intrusted to the care of the 
chieftain; not yet all eagerly busying themselves to receive 
the first news of the day, as later on, at the time of Demos- 
thenes ; but full already of the spirit of gossip, taking their 
first lessons in dialectics and argument, preparing for their 
race a long era of rationalism, philosophy, and discussion ; or 
listening eagerly to the first strains of that enchanting poetry 
and music, which was to last forever, and to re-echo in future 
ages wherever the name of Greece should reach, and the works 
of her oldest poets should be read. 



ILL 

In our false ideas of primitive history, man was first a hunter, 
a tearer of the flesh of his enemies, a rude warrior, and a 
blood-thirsty savage. Nothing is more opposed to the first 
pictures of the state of man as modern researches have spread 



HEROIC GREECE. 



321 



them before our astonished vision. JNTimrod was a hunter in 
the plains of Babylon and on the shores of the Persian gulf ; 
but he was an exception ; and hence he destroyed clanship in 
the countries which he devastated, and established the first 
centralized empire. But wherever man was allowed to settle 
quietly and follow the natural inclinations of his race, the 
first state of society was undoubtedly idyllic, pastoral, and agri- 
cultural. 

It is Herodotus himself who remarks, at the very beginning 
of his work, that Asia and Europe had, from the beginning, 
lived quietly apart, without any mutual disturbance, until the 
rapes of Io, of Europa, and of Helen, kindled for the first time 
war between the two continents. This assertion of the Father 
of History is confirmed by some writer whose name now 
escapes us, and who remarks, with great justice and force, that 
the preparations for the Trojan war, all over Greece and Asia 
Minor, show conclusively that those countries had, until that 
time, enjoyed a long period of quiet and peace, and had 
reached, in happiness and contentment, a high -state of pros- 
perity. There can be no doubt of this in the mind of any 
thoughtful reader perusing the pages of Homer and of Hesiod, 
chiefly the " Opera et Dies." 

And on this subject we cannot but refer with amazement 
to the opinion of some modern critics, who, finding the great 
work of the Boeotian poet (Hesiod) too peaceful and bucolic 
for their ideas of those Mood-thirsty ages, imagine the two 
bards — the Ionian and the Boeotian — to have been the heads 
of two schools of poets : the Homeric, full of fury, of wars, 
and rumors of war ; the Hesiodic, intent only on rural peace, 
as a protest against the general savagery of the period. This 
thought may be ingenious, but it is not true. Homer does not 
sing only of war. His Odyssey is as idyllic and pastoral as the 
" Opera et Dies" of Hesiod ; and even his " Biad" is full of 
sweet' descriptions of agricultural and pastoral scenes, showing 



322 



GENTILISM. 



tlie general bias of the time to have been peaceful and home- 
loving. The very shield of Achilles, forged by Yulcan, repre- 
sented on its convex surface more scenes of husbandmen's life 
than of warriors. Yes, the very Trojan war itself, with all its 
immense preparations, supports our argument. 

Another, and not unimportant, confirmation of what we have 
alleged, is to be found in the description of an Hellenic private 
house at that period. It was always large and spacious, cool 
and airy, as the climate required. Around an open court ran 
shaded galleries, to which succeeded, much later on, the " at- 
riums" of the Romans,. and later still, the "cloisters" of our 
mediaeval monasteries. Bed-chambers were prepared for the men 
around these lower galleries, and, from the court itself, a large 
entrance conducted the men to the " hall," where they met for 
conversation. At the back of the whole building stood the 
" hearth," where the lady of the house was usually to be found. 
A flight of steps was constructed for her especial use, leading 
to an upper gallery, around which were arranged the women's 
apartments. Everywhere painted .woods, even then orna- 
mented with the brush and pencil, gave a cheerful appearance 
to the interior ; and polished metals — brass, chiefly — reflected, 
in the evenings, the light of the blazing fire of the hearth, or 
of the lamps suspended around. Was this the castle of a me- 
diaeval Norman, or rather the elegant dwelling of civilized 
people ? It is true there was somewhere a room apart where 
arms were kept. We know how they were used in Ithaca 
against the obstreperous lovers of Penelope. But as we do not 
read anywhere that public arsenals had yet been built to de- 
posit the arms required in time of war, or for the hunt, it was 
but natural that such necessary articles should be deposited in 
the houses of private citizens. 

These were the dwellings of the inhabitants. All around 
were erected large stables for then- numerous horses, or for the 
well-fed cattle. Capacious barns stood ready to receive, in the 



HEEOIC GREECE. 



323 



autumn, the produce of the fields ; for the inhabitants were all 
of them agriculturists. Everywhere the soil was cultivated 
with the greatest care ; all the cereals known to us were than 
in use ; the grape-vine flourished, and was laden, in due seasoa, 
with its rich purple clusters ; fruit-trees of every kind abound- 
ed ; and the pruning-knife, reaping-hook, scythe, and the 
plough, all the ordinary implements, indeed, used by our farm- 
ers and gardeners, were constantly in the hands of the primitive 
Hellenes, although " modern genius " had not yet invented for 
them the sowing, reaping, and thrashing machines, or the steam- 
ploughs. Any one acquainted with the agricultural details con- 
tained in the most ancient authors, may well doubt if the 
Greece of after ages was ever better cultivated ; nay, if in our 
boasted days, many nations practice agriculture with the same 
success.' The Hellenes of our times are certainly, in that re- 
gard, far behind their Pelasgic progenitors. 

A few paragraphs above, we have spoken of metals, of brass 
chiefly, used in private houses together with fine woods. There 
is a very general impression, in these days, that metals were . 
scarcely known, and very sparingly used, before our age. We 
have, however, only to read Homer attentively to find that the 
houses of rich people — and many of them were rich — were posi- 
tively filled with metallic implements of every description. 
Our most wealthy mansions cannot compete with them in this 
regard. Polished brass was certainly seen everywhere ; but 
what an idea of the splendor of the interior of Pelasgic houses 
does it give us, to read, that in the dining-hall of Alcinous 
there was a row of "gold statues of young men carrying in their 
hands lighted torches, to shed a brilliant light on the well-built 
walls and the high .ceilings ?" (Odyssey, vii., 100). Yet the 
manners of the inhabitants of this splendid palace were so sim- 
ple, that JSTausicaa, the daughter of the Phseacian King, used to 
go to wash the linen of the family in the stream running at the 
foot of the next meadow. Homer, it is true, may not have had 



324 



GEJSTTILISjr. 



the intention to state an historical fact with respect to these 
statues of Alcinous ; yet he would not certainly have men- 
tioned it if he had not himself witnessed some fact of the 
kind, or heard of it on good authority. He always described 
what he saw or knew. But how many other details given by 
the poet prove the mineral wealth of those people ? The walls, 
covered with metallic ornaments ; the seats of brass or iron ; 
the ewers for washing the hands in gold ; the basins of silver ; 
everything, in fact, except the house itself, in metal. Let the 
reader imagine all the wooden utensils seen in our houses; all 
tin plate \ised by us, of earthenware, of common china, as it is 
called, all the chairs and seats spread in our parlors, to be made 
of brass, gold, or silver, and he will have a faithful representa- 
tion of the interior of a Greek dwelling in the heroic age. 
The Phoenicians, and the Arabs before them, as testified by 
Job, had already carried the mining art as far as it is canied 
now. 

Herodotus, an eye witness (vi., 46), mentions in particular 
the gold mines of Thasos : " The most wonderful of them," he 
says, " are those discovered by the Phoenicians, when led by 
Thasus they colonized the island. These mines are opposite 
Samothrace, between iEnyra and Ccenyra : a large mountain 
has been thrown upside down in the search." Prom these 
words of the Father of History, gold was there obtained by 
washing. We know that the Phoenicians extracted it also from 
quartz. 

If people in those times had not yet come to the point of 
producing lumps of metal, equal in bulk to the enormous 
masses which now issue daily from our modem huge factories 
and iron mills, yet what they produced was much more highly 
elaborated, and, with them, art replaced bulk. If the reader 
should require further evidence of a similar purport, let him 
consult Herodotus, where he tells us of the metallic wealth of 
Croesus in Lydia, who lived in an age not very far removed 



HEROIC GEEECE. 



325 



from that high, antiquity which occupies us ; the immense treas- 
ures of ancient Hellenic sanctuaries, particularly of the cele- 
brated one of Delphi, etc. 

But as our scope does not require more convincing proofs, 
we will merely ask ourselves in concluding this interesting sub- 
ject : Still, it may be objected, what about the Cyclops and the 
Polyphemusses, and the Geryons of the Greek heroic age % Is 
it not by such highly- wrought descriptions of barbarism and 
savagery, that we ought to judge of that ancient period of Hel- 
las ? To this we reply, that all those wonderful tales were nar- 
rated of far distant countries. Geryon was a monster flourish- 
ing at the western extremity of Spain, at the very last limit of 
the then known world. The Cyclops and Polyphemusses lived 
in desert islands, and ate the flesh only of strangers stranded 
on their shore. The Griffins, who fought so ardently against 
the foreign people who came to steal their gold, were supposed 
to f ap their wings and sharpen their claws in the frozen atmos- 
phere of the far north. And so of the others. It is just what 
travellers used formerly to relate of the strange countries they 
alone had visited. Hence the French proverb : " A beau 
mentir qui vient de loin," etc. We cannot conclude without a 
word or two on the morality of these primitive ages. It was 
then that " suppliants " — siopplices — enjoyed an inviolable char- 
acter ; that the sanctity of an oath was universally respected ; 
that " hospitality " was not only a name, but a great fact, so 
that strangers were treated almost as sacred beings, except in a 
few spots on the borders of hostile countries, as in Tauris, 
where Greeks, having often acted as pirates, were openly 
treated as enemies and sacrificed to Diana. The horrors of the 
old Greek drama have been often insisted upon as positive proofs 
of barbarism. Yet even in it there are many exculpatory cir- 
cumstances which militate against such a conclusion. GMipus, 
for instance, was never guilty of voluntary incest ; yet he 
treated himself, and was treated by fate, as if he had been a 



326 



GENTILISM. 



willing criminal. Who, in our age, thinks that adultery ought 
to be punished as it was on Clytemnestra and her whole fam- 
ily ? The " feast " of Thyestes was evidently a myth, intended 
to explain the long misfortunes of the Atridse. For people 
then believed that a great crime required a great expiation, 
and this conviction cannot but be a strong basis of morality. 
Those very " horrible " facts themselves, instead of indicating 
a state of barbarism, do, on the contrary, when we study them 
more profoundly, supply a convincing evidence of the intense 
vitality of human conscience in those ages. 

IT. 

We have asserted that the period of pure religion in Greece 
must have been short, and must soon have given way to pan- 
theism. We must now examine the "backward progress" of 
the Hellenes, as we have already done in the case of Hindostan 
and Egypt. It is remarkable that all ancient authors attribute 
the first great step in error to Orpheus, the almost-inspired and 
divine bard. He preached openly pantheism, and even, ac- 
cording to many, he was, conjointly with Homer and Ilesiod, 
who appeared long after him, the author of positive idolatry, 
by " giving names to the gods," so that he must have been one 
of those Pelasgians mentioned by Herodotus in a passage Ave 
have previously quoted. 

It is evident tfiat no single man, chiefly a man of genius, 
could have played so many and opposite characters. Orpheus, 
in many things, is a generic name, and includes a succession 
of several men. But the fact of all being included in one, 
shows that the decline in pure doctrine must have been rapid, 
and the result of a short period of time. 

The reader will find in Cudworth's " Systema Intellectuale" 
many passages of ancient authors attributing to Orpheus the 



HEROIC GREECE. 



327 



belief that " God was everything," and " that everything was 
God." The same is contained in the passage of St. Clement 
of Alexandria, given by ns, in which God is said to be " the 
beginning, the middle, and the end" of all things. Several 
hymns attributed to Orpheus contain not only the broadest 
pantheism, but indicate a step nearer to the " elementary " wor- 
ship mentioned in the " Book of Wisdom," by attributing 
divine attributes to the sun, the stars, the earth, the elements 
in general and in particular. Our readers remember the pas- 
sage of the inspired writer we quoted at the beginning of this 
work. The element-worship of Orpheus is another illustra- 
tion of it. This, in our opinion, must have been the religion 
of the Pelasgians for a long time of their existence as a race, 
although we have scarcely any proof to offer in support of it. 
We could, nevertheless, besides the general religious and moral 
complexion of the times, give, as an argument on our side, the 
well-known primitive worship of the Etruscans — Pelasgians 
according- to the most common opinion, supported by Niebuhr 
and Ottfried Miiller — and certainly, at first, worshippers of 
the elements and forces of nature, undoubtedly great diviners, 
augurers, and conjurors, as the element -worshippers must 
always be. Every one knows how they studied the phenomena 
of " fulguration," the flight of birds, the sudden appearance 
of " monsters," etc. Their complex ritual was the natural 
consequence of the complexity of divinized natural phenom- 
ena; everything, in fact, goes to prove that the Etruscans, 
Pelasgians originally, brought to Tyrrhenia the awe-inspiring 
pantheism of the adorers of " disordered " Nature. 

Another, and perhaps stronger, support of this opinion is 
taken from the passage of Herodotus on the Pelasgians, quoted 
at the beginning of the preceding chapter. If they did not at 
first give names to the gods (Oeovg), they, however, worshipped 
them. But what can be the meaning of such a worship if it 
is not individualized, at least, by the sight, since it is not by , 



328 



GENTILISM. 



the speech ? They must have worshipped what they saw, 
since absent beings absolutely require names to be remembered 
by. Apollo and Athene, in tbe opinion of an Hellene, not 
falling under the sight of the worshipper, must have an indi- 
vidual name to be known by. But the forked lightning, the 
coruscating meteor, the speaking ox, the eagles flying swiftly 
in pairs, etc., need not be named when they are seen ; and it is 
then alone that they are adored — they are called " Oioi." 

However this may be, such a religion existed certainly in 
Greece, and something like it was attributed, by many ancient 
authors, to Orpheus. But when the imagination of the Hel- 
lenes began to unfold its wings under the pure, clear sky of 
their country, they felt the need of a more cheerful religion, 
and the poets came to their aid by inventing " mythology." 
Of this now we have to speak somewhat more extensively, as, 
on this subject, many false opinions are entertained, which a 
Christian ought closely to examine and sternly to reject. 

V. 

The word "myth" did not primarily mean "fable" in 
Greek ; it meant originally an " explanation of common 
speech," either by allegory or by an historical fiction. This 
last sense is the most natural one. In the East chiefly, where 
imagination predominates, a speaker, to render truth more 
attractive to the minds of his hearers, covers it with an em- 
blem, or with a supposed history ; and the hearers, accustomed 
to such mental operations, detect instantaneously the object 
of the speaker, are pleased with his ingenuity, and retain more 
easily in their memory the truths hidden under the brilliant 
fiction. To us the same rhetorical artifice is merely a meta- 
phor ; to an Oriental, it is a myth. A myth, however, is sub- 
ject to an abuse which metaphors and other similar figures of 



HEROIC GREECE. 



329 



speech are not. If myths had been only metaphorical, or even 
allegorical, as the parables of the New Testament, or the fables 
of ^Esop, they would have led into error only extremely stupid 
people. Every one who reads the "Parable of the Sower" in 
the gospel, immediately perceives it to be an allegory, and 
endeavors to discover the explanation. But a myth, purely 
historical, although apparently of more easy comprehension, 
will, precisely on account of this facility of understanding, 
lead ordinary people to imagine that the fictitious history is 
everything, and thus they take the husk for the kernel, the in- 
genious covering for the hidden truth. When the Egyptian 
priest related to Herodotus that one day Hercules hearing 
Jupiter, wished, and asked to see him. But, as the Supreme 
God must remain invisible even to a hero, and as Jupiter was, 
nevertheless, desirous of gratifying Hercules, he took the hide 
of a ram, with the horns on it, and covering himself entirely 
with it, allowed the son of Semele thus to see him. When 
this myth, we say, was related by an Egyptian priest to Hero- 
dotus, with the remark that this was the reason why Amun 
(Jupiter) is represented with the head of a ram, we do not 
know precisely what the good Halycarnassian may have 
thought of it, since he does not attempt to acquaint us with 
his ideas on the subject ; but it is certain that the majority of 
the people who heard the story thought only of Amun, and of 
Hercules, and of the head and hide of a ram. The great idea 
of a supreme and invisible God becoming perceptible to our 
sight by the creation of the Universe, represented here by the 
sun entering the zodiacal sign of the ram, altogether escaped 
them. The allegorical history had taken the place of the 
meaning conveyed by it. The religious doctrine had fallen 
entirely into oblivion. Truth had become a myth, and relig- 
ion had become changed into " mythology." 

Nor was it only intellectual and religious doctrines which 
thus assumed the form of myths, but physical events of every- 



330 



GENTILISM. 



day occurrence, or scientific facts, as we of this age call them, 
were also subjected to the same process. Every atmospheric 
change, for instance, was explained by a myth ; and soon there 
were as many gods as meteoric phenomena. The same took 
place in the wonderful development of vegetation ; in the hid- 
den current of life in all its stages ; in the mysteries concealed 
under the waves of the ocean, as well as in the immensity of 
celestial space. Myths everywhere ; and thus gods everywhere. 
The life of man, that most mysterious of beings, could not 
remain independent of the same mythical appreciation ; and 
St. Augustine tells us humorously, but with truth, in his great 
work, " De Civitate Dei," Book vi., Chap. 9 : "In the union 
of man and wife, the god Jugatinus must intervene ; we have 
no objection to this. But when the bride is to be taken to her 
new home, the god Domiducus must be there to conduct her ; 
that she may like to stay at home, is the office of the god Do- 
mitius ; that she may not separate from her husband, the god- 
dess Manturna must see to it. "What more is wanted % Let 

the pudor of the bride be spared Why is the room 

filled with gods and goddesses when the grooms and brides- 
maids leave it ? What need is there of the goddess 

Yirginiensis \ of the god Subigus % Is not the husband 
enough ? " 

And when the child is born : " If a father of family em- 
ployed two nurses, one to give the baby food and the other 
drink, would not people say that he is crazy, and wants to turn 
his house into a scene of comedy ; yet these ' theologians ' must 
invent for the child the goddesses Educa and Potina." 

" Yarron," says again St. Augustine, " unfolds a long list of 
gods from the conception of man, beginning by Janus ; and 
the incredible series ends only at the death of the decrepit old 
stager ; closing the interminable procession by the goddess 
Noenia, who is after all only the song chanted at the end of the 
funeral of old people." 



HEROIC GEEECE. 



331 



As every accident of human life was thus placed under the 
care of some supernatural being, the natural consequence was, 
that man himself, especially if a prince or a hero, became god- 
like, and after his death was ranked among the gods. Thus a 
new source of inextricable confusion arose in " mythology !" 
Real historical facts, the events, namely, of some important 
human life, became mythic ; and often could scarcely be distin- 
guished from older and more solemn myths. Thus Hercules, 
Mercury, etc., became types of altogether different mythologi- 
cal personages. 

It is into this complication of absurdities that modern anti- 
quarians have tried to introduce order. But as most of these 
have been systematic men, they have succeeded in clearing 
away only a few difficulties, whilst the exclusiveness of their 
systems have introduced new sources of error and obscurity. 
Thus to the primitive idea of some old Greek philosophers, 
chiefly Epicharmus and Empedocles, for whom the gods were 
merely the types of physical phenomena, Jove being only the 
Upper Sky, Apollo the Sun, and so forth ; to the bold teach- 
ing of more modern Greek authors, like Euhemerus, who saw 
in gods and goddesses only deified men and women ; to the 
more dignified opinion of many Christian writers who have 
attempted to explain mythology as only the corruption of re- 
vealed truth, have succeeded in our days sometimes the learn- 
ed, severe, and convincing criticism of a few, sometimes the 
most ridiculous assumptions of a larger number of German and 
French authors, the English scarcely daring to take such bold 
flights of fancy. 

There is a plain assertion of Herodotus in Book ii., 53, making 
the following important statement : " Whence each of the gods 
sprung, whether they existed always, and of what form they were, 
was, so to speak, unknown till yesterday. For, I am of opin- 
ion, that Hesiod and Homer lived four hundred years before 
my time, and not more, and these poets framed a theogony for 



332 



GETSTTILISM. 



the Greeks, and gave names to the gods, and assigned to tliem 
honors and arts, and declared their several forms .... What I 
have stated above (with respect to the Pelasgians), is derived 
from the Dodonean priestesses ; but the last assertion, which 
relates to Ilesiod and Homer, I say on my own authority." 

It was only, therefore, four centuries before the Father of 
History that real idolatry began in Greece. For there conld 
be no idolatry properly so called, before the gods had names 
and forms, after whose likeness images and idols could be 
made to be worshipped ; and this is attributed, as a well-known 
fact, to Ilesiod and Homer. To be sure, German critics have 
raised serious doubts about the personality of these two poets. 
But this does not touch the question. For, admitting even 
that the critics are right, and that the Iliad, for instance, is the 
cm n position of a number of rhapsodists, the poem, at least, can- 
hot be older than the time assigned to it by Herodotus, since 
he asserted it positively, on his own authority, and he is a bet- 
ter authority on this subject than any modern critic. We do 
not, however, for our part, propose to take away from Homer 
the authorship of his masterpiece, whatever may be said of the 
Odyssey, which was certainly written later. It is the indi- 
vidual Homer to whom we shall refer, and not unknown rhap- 
sodists. 

What, then, is the special work which must be assigned to the 
great. Ionian bard ? It is the anthropomorphism of the gods. 
He gave them shapes, forms, individualities. He was their 
creator, and he gave them names. He was thus the chief 
author of idolatry in Greece. But were they not derived from 
previous myths? Most certainly; at least as far as regards 
those divinities whose worship preceded the age of the poets. 
For it seems certain to us, that the imagination of the bards 
created many of those fanciful beings whom the Hellenes wor- 
shipped at a later period. But the gods known to the nation 
before detailed biographies were written of them, before " Ho- 



HEROIC GREECE. 



333 



mer invented their names and forms," were certainly mythical. 
Of this number, Apollo was undoubtedly one of the first ; either 
as representing the sun issuing young, blooming, and glorious 
from the hands of the creator, his father ; or even with a higher 
and more sacred meaning, as typifying the future reveal er of 
the will of Jove, by his oracles ; the Son of Zeus born on earth 
to restore our humanity to its former ideal ; for Apollo was 
certainly for the Greeks the ideal of humanity. We can only 
conjecture this, as nothing can be positively determined on the 
subject. All we assert is, that myths, in the sense we have 
explained, were the original foundation of the subsequent my- 
thological conceptions of the poets. But these brilliant and 
imaginative wooers of the Muses so completely obscured them, 
that it is perfectly useless, in our age, to attempt to disem- 
body them. Their meaning known at first, has entirely disap- 
peared. The fail* form has for ever concealed the inner soul. 

The result of this baneful operation was to " humanize " 
God himself — what we have called just now "anthropomor- 
phism." And not only did God took the shape of man, but He 
took also his passions and vices. It is quite a mistake to sup- 
pose that there was in it something of the great and consoling 
truth of the "Incarnation" in the Christian sense. In Greek 
anthropomorphism there was not even the slightest reminis- 
cence of this great and holy dogma, promised to the first man 
and woman after their fall. Nay more ; it was a great deal 
below even that of the avatars of Vishnu in Hindoo mythology. 

When we read the acts and the words of the gods in the 
Iliad of Homer, we are astonished at the puerility, wantonness, 
and gross immorality which the narrative supposes. The poet, 
so truly great, and often sublime, who could represent the 
whole of heaven grinning lewdly at the capture of Venus and 
Mars in the net of Vulcan, had evidently lost the most elemen- 
tal ideas of religion. And, yet, such was the man who was to 
be the religious teacher of a great and most influential nation ; 



334 



GENTILISM. 



to lay the foundation of a literature lasting more than twelve 
hundred years, and impregnating with its spirit so many other 
literatures which were to follow ! The only wonder is, that 
moral decomposition did not proceed more rapidly ; and that 
the people trained hy such a master did not die out a thousand 
years before it did in fact. It is in our opinion an evidence 
that the Hellenic nature during the heroic age had imbibed 
principles of nobleness, simplicity, and natural virtue, able to 
bear up for a long period of time against the most powerful 
incentives to corruption. 

VI. 

Yet writers. Christian writers, have maintained that the 
Greek mythology was a great source of culture, and literally 
civilized the nation. Prof. Ileeren writes as follows: "The 
more a nation conceives its gods to be like men, the nearer does 
it approach them, arid the more intimately does it live with 
them. According to the earliest views of the Greeks, the gods 
often wandered among them, shared in their business, requited 
them with good or ill, according to their reception, and espe- 
cially to the number of presents and sacrifices with which they 
were honored. Those views decided the character of religious 
worship, which received from them, not only its forms, but 
also its life and meaning. How could this worship have re- 
ceived any other than a cheerful, friendly character ? The gods 
were gratified with the same pleasures as mortals .... With 
such conceptions, how could their holidays have been other- 
wise than joyous ones ? And as their joy was expressed by 
dance and song, both of these necessarily became constituent 
parts of their religious festivals. 

"It is another question : What influence must such a relig- 
ion have had on the morals of the nation ? The gods were, 
by no means, represented as pure moral beings, but as beings 



HEEOIC GEEECE. 



335 



possessed of all human passions and weaknesses. But, at the 
same time, the Greeks never entertained the idea that their 
divinities were to he held up as models of virtue ; and hence 
the injury done to morality by such a religion, however warmly 
the philosophers afterwards spoke against it, could hardly have 
been so great as we, with our prepossessions, should have at 
first imagined. If it was not declared a duty to become like 
the gods, no excuse for the imitation could be di-awn from the 
faults and crimes attributed to them 

" By the transformation of the Grecian divinities into moral 
agents, an infinite field was open for poetic invention. By 
becoming human, the gods became peculiarly beings for the 

poets The great characteristics of human nature were 

expressed in them ; they were exhibited as so many definite 
archetypes. The poet might relate of them whatever be pleased, 
but he was never permitted to alter the original characters. 
.... Thus the popular religion of the Greeks was thoroughly 
poetical. There is no need of a long argument to show that 
it also decided the character of Grecian art, by affording an 
inexhaustible supply of subjects." 

The main idea contained in these reflections is that Hel- 
lenic polytheism became a source of true culture for the na- 
tion, because from it naturally followed cheerful festivals, a 
well-spring of poetical invention, and a high scope of art ; yet 
as true culture cannot be supposed without morality, a word 
is said to excuse the real profligacy of the religion. We are 
glad to meet such a thesis expressed in such terms, because the 
true idea of civilization and progress enters deeply into our 
subject, and we can find no better opportunity to treat of it. 
Already, in a previous chapter, we have remarked that the 
period of the introduction of real idolatry in India, in Egypt, 
and in Greece, was an epoch of great material refinement, and 
of an immense development of the fine arts. We will grant, 

therefore, to Professor Heeren, and to those who think with him, 
23 



336 GENTILISM. 

more than they ask, since we generalize the phenomenon and 
show its universality and its almost ubiquitous extension. In 
Hindostan, in Egypt, in Greece, later in Italy, as soon as real 
idolatrous polytheism appears, immense and splendid buildings 
are constructed, prodigious sculptures, showing a rich invention 
and a most artistic taste, cover immense walls, where their stu- 
pendous relics still astonish the traveller. "We learn from his- 
tory that, at the same epoch, extraordinary festivals and sacri- 
fices often took place, in the midst of the most exuberant joy of 
innumerable multitudes; and the universal myth of Bacchus, 
Dionysus, or whatever name that god was known by along the 
Ganges and the Nile, constituted the inspiration of this uproar- 
ious hilarity. Long and splendid poems, likewise, with lyric 
songs and musical harmony, reflect on those ages a vivid light 
of poetry and art. Is not, after all, polytheism a glorious 
thing for our sad and down-trodden humanity? What if 
morality suffers a little ? It is fortunately inscribed in the 
heart, and exterior religion has nothing to do with it. This 
is, we think, the thought of Professor Ileeren and of his school, 
and we have only expressed it in stronger terms than any one 
of them has ventured to do. 

There is no doubt that, when the principle of virtue is 
uprooted, the day has come for the triumph of the senses. 
But to eulogize a religion precisely because it favors the latter 
at the expense of the former, is certainly a strange position for 
a Christian to take. Yet it is exactly what the above quotation 
does. Joy, poetry, and art are very fine words ; but they re- 
quire great qualification in order to be estimated at their true 
worth. Not every kind of joy means happiness ; not every kind 
of poetry commends itself to the human conscience ; art itself 
is a corrupter when the hand that holds the chisel or the brush is 
impure ; and as all contributes to what is called culture or civil- 
ization, we may infer that not everything bearing that name de- 
serves admiration, the same as not everything that glitters is gold. 



HEROIC GEEECE. 



337 



A nation feci only on these husks could not but end in 
rottenness, because all these sources of culture are material, 
sensual, promotive of passion and chiefly of lust ; and for true 
progress man requires that his immortal soul should be the first 
cultivated, and that her mastership over the senses should be at 
all times vindicated. When the true philosophers, who appeared 
long after the beginning of this intoxicating period of poetry 
and art, perceived the false direction that the progress of the 
nation had taken, they tried to bring it back to first principles. 
The school of Socrates and of Plato, in particular, insisted on 
ethics, and on the superiority of the spiritual and intellectual 
part of man over the sensible and perishable one. But it was 
already too late ; so late, in fact, that even the best among 
them did not see the greatest danger for the future, and the 
real cause of the degeneracy whk-h was already, in their time, 
but too apparent. They attributed it chiefly to the Sophists, 
as they called them ; and they thought that the peril lay prin- 
cipally in an im bridled rationalism, which already denied the 
most clear principles of sound philosophy. They themselves 
partook, to a great degree, of the universal artistic fanaticism. 
They were Greeks, and lovers of the " beautiful." And al- 
though Plato made a sublime dis-inction between Venus 
Urania and the voluptuous mother of Cupid, his distinction 
was, unfortunately, impotent against moral corruption, and 
could not stop it in its devastating career. Hence, even 
amongst ourselves " Platonic love " has become synonymous 
with " impossible love," and the object of a great deal of 
harmless ridicule. 

But, in spite of this moral blindness, the philosophers of 
whom we speak saw that the danger of the nation lay in the 
neglect of the immortal part of man. And they endeavored 
to convince their countrymen that the tendency of such neglect 
was tb pure materialism, and, consequently, to brutdlisation, if 
we may be allowed to coin a word. But what was the cause 



838 



GENTILISM. 



of it ? Not alone the insane rationalism of the Sophists ; not 
alone the ridiculous pretensions of the dialectitians, who prom- 
ised to teach young men how to " make the worse appear the bet- 
ter," or ci the better appear the worse ;" but originally, and at all 
times, and chiefly, the predominance given to the senses by 
the prevailing materialistic polytheism. And this had cer- 
tainly arisen from degrading the gods to the level of humanity, 
endowing them with the same aims, and passions, and vices ; 
in short, from the pure and simple " anthropomorphism " of the 
religion. Even had the philosophers perceived this, they would 
not have dared to assert it openly. They had to respect the 
" religion of the State." It was one of the great accusations 
against Socrates that he believed in other gods than " those of 
the State." Happy he if, before drinking the hemlock, he had 
openly acknowledged the issue between himself and his accus- 
ers, and announced that the " gods of the State " were immoral 
beings, unworthy not only of adoration, but of the most com- 
mon respect ! He would have died a martyr to the doctrine 
of the true and living God ! Plato, in his " Cratylus," shows 
openly enough that this was in his mind ; yet neither he, nor 
Socrates his master, dared openly avow it. 

And, to speak only of the language of art and literature, leav- 
ing aside that of religion, what could be the culture promoted 
by Greek art and poetry ? The answer is plain : that of the 
beautiful. But which beautiful 1 only the material and sensi- 
ble — there can be no other answer. Hence, all the object the 
Hellenes could aim at was to depict, either on canvas, or in 
marble and bronze, or in imperishable verse, the exterior ob- 
jects of creation, chiefly the noble or soft features of man and 
woman. This was for them the " ideal " of humanity ; and in 
this they certainly reached perfection. ~No other people, since 
their time, has ever been able to attain such perfection of 
festhetic beauty in art, as did the Greeks. But the " ideal " of 
human beauty must comprise more than the form. It must 



HEROIC GREECE. 



339 



reach the soul and depict the passions. What ideal of the 
kind could there he for the Greeks ? ~No higher one certainly 
than that of the gods. Even in the supposition of Prof. 
Heeren, that they were never intended to be imitated morally 
— a proposition we will shortly discuss — at least their passions, 
either noble or vile, were the true " ideal " of painter, sculptor, 
and poet among the Greeks. Could this be a high " ideal ?" 
Let any man, if he be a Christian at all, peruse the greatest 
work of Homer, the Iliad, to satisfy himself on this point, and 
we have no fear of the answer he will return. But the ad- 
mirers of the beautiful in the Hellenic sense, will say that a 
reader of the Iliad in our days ought to pass lightly over the 
passages where the gods are described — " It is too childish to 
be adverted to.'' We insist that these very passages ought 
to be seriously read and studied, if we wish to know what was 
the real " ideal " of Hellenic art and poetry, since this is the 
question. 

And the writers we now oppose are Christian men, who 
know full well what has been, since Christianity, the " ideal " 
of our painters, sculptors, and poets. They have no doubt 
stood often in admiration before their master-pieces ; they have 
no doubt felt, and have probably themselves not been wholly 
insensible to, the heavenly inspirations which gave them birth. 
What if the human shape, under their brush, their chisel, or 
their pen, is not depicted with such anatomical perfection as dis- 
tinguished the works of Phidias, or Polygnotus, or Praxiteles, or 
Homer ? The divine soul that breathes everywhere in modern 
productions, shows how infinitely higher is the Christian ideal 
than the pagan one ; and to attribute to the works of antiquity 
the Hellenic culture and civilization is, after all, merely to say 
that both must have been infinitely under our own, and that 
the civilization they brought with them was an inferior one. 
It must be remarked, however, that the " love of the beautiful" 
— culture consequently among the Greeks — did not come from 



340 



GENTILISM. 



their religion ; but, rather, that their religion, all material and 
sensual as it was, came from their love of the " sensible beauti- 
ful," which must have been a characteristic of the race before 
their polytheism. Bo'.h were perhaps developed at once. But 
their absurd religion had very little to do with the love they felt 
for the beautiful. That was in them when they were born. 

One characteristic, however, of their art must be ascribed to 
their religion, their fondness, namely, for the nude human 
forms. And this deserves at least a passing notice. 

It is, we think, Herodotus who remarks that the Eastern 
nations, the Persians particularly, felt it a shame, even in men, 
to let any part of their body appear, except the face and hands ; 
but that the Greeks felt no such scruple on the subject. This 
is the thought. We have forgotten the precise words. The 
remark is an important one, as it shows that for primitive man 
the body was a mysterious temple to be kept constantly in the 
" shade of the sacred enclosures and the groves," as they spoke 
at the time. The cynics of our clays treat the question too 
flippantly, when they object, that covering, clothes consequent- 
ly, are required in cold climates, not in warm, and still less in 
hot ones ; and when they point triumphantly to the different 
clothing of the savages living under the tropics from the Esqui- 
maux who live within the Arctic circle. This may be true of 
savages who have lost the sense of all the mysteries with which 
our humanity is sacredly surrounded. We have, only, in reply, 
to point to the Syrians, Persians, Arabs, Indians, and Chinese, 
who invariably, in the hottest weather, and in their own burn- 
ing climes, cover their bodies with what may appear to be a 
superfluous and even ridiculous care. And it is not woman only 
who is always religiously covered, but in those countries man 
himself would feel it a shame, as Herodotus said more than 
twenty centuries ago, to let any part of his body appear except 
his face and hands. This shows that the care with which women 
are veiled is not, as people somewhat carelessly conclude, the 



HEEOIC GEEECE. 



341 



effect of an unnatural jealousy on the part of the men ; but 
that horror of nudity is in the blood of those races who seem 
still to possess the modesty which became a part of human 
nature after the fall. And it originated in the consciousness 
of the corruption which had seized our senses ; so that we could 
no more be allowed the simple freedom of look enjoyed during 
the period of innocence. For savages the danger is not so 
great, as their senses even, and especially their imagination, are 
blunted by their want of intellectual development. But cul- 
tivated man is bound by the laws of decency. 

The Hellenes were the first of polished nations who, on ac- 
count of their love of the beautiful, threw aside the restraint 
imposed by modesty ; and, not only the wrestler, the athlete, 
and the racer, laid aside their dress to give, in the open day, an 
exhibition of their respective arts, enhanced by the sight of 
their natural beauty ; but woman herself, at least in the public 
squares of Sparta, shared with man the odious privilege of 
barefacedness. 

Religion certainly was, in great measure, the cause of this 
remarkable difference between the Hellenes and other ancient 
nations. We cannot say, however, that they stood alone in this 
unenviable peculiarity. The Egyptians had even anticipated 
them ; among whom the dancing-girls and female musicians 
were, perhaps, the first to break through the rules of decency. 
We say that religion — yes, the religion of Homer and his fol- 
lowers — was the chief cause of the immodesty of the Greeks ; 
since, after him, the gods could no more be represented in 
the severely modest garb of ancient statues ; but sculptors and 
painters were at liberty to picture them as simple men and 
women that they were. It is the custom, on this subject, to 
congratulate the Greeks on having dared to " break through 
the dead formulas of old myths," by giving to their gods the 
freedom of movement and the elegance of form which the 
" ideal of humanity " requires. We insist upon it again, that 



342 



GENTILISM. 



by "breaking tbrough tbe dead formulas of myths," tbey 
merely renounced all participation in the religious knowledge 
contained originally in the myths ; and they became, as the 
old Egyptian priest says in the Timseus, " only children, with- 
out any tradition of old times." As to giving to the gods 
" freedom of movement and elegance of form," they merely 
placed them naked under the eyes of all ; and so accus- 
tomed themselves to lose all feelings of modesty with respect 
to their own bodies^and to that of others. 

And we ought not to imagine that, for them, everything 
was so enchanting, so harmonious, so well-proportioned, that 
they could look on the lines, as on so many beautiful geomet- 
rical or even astronomical figures, without any reference to 
the senses. To think thus would be to forget, or belie, entirely 
human nature. Any one who has read the productions of 
even old Greek authors, who were far more chaste than those 
who succeeded them in after ages, knows full well how intense 
in them was, what we call in modern tongue, sensuality. It 
inspires nearly every line of their writings. 

The! guilt of the Hellenes on this subject was not con- 
fined to their own age and country. From them the evil 
spread through all European nations, and, perhaps, for all 
time. It is from them that the Romans, so grave at first, so 
chaste, so thoroughly masters over their senses, became, in 
time, through Grecian art, poetry, and religious festivals, ar- 
dent followers of Epicurus, altogether given to sensual pleasures, 
great admirers of nudity, and, at last, thoroughly vicious and 
degraded. It is from them that modern nations have imbibed 
the same spirit ; so that there is scarcely any considerable 
art-collection without Grecian nudities. And we have the 
strange spectacle, everywhere in Europe, of Christian people 
collecting in the same edifices sacred to art, the sublime and 
pure pictures and statues inspired by the virtues of Faith £.nd 
Chastity, together with base imitations of the universal subjects 



HEROIC GREECE, 



343 



treated by old Greek painters and sculptors. From this, lite- 
wise, the whole of Europe rejected, as ridiculous, the solemn 
garb of eastern men and women, so well adapted to their relig- 
ion and climate, and made the alluring sight of sensual, living 
beauty the constant theme of fashion, and, we may say, the 
chief object of every social gathering. 

In attributing to the far-Orient solemnity of dress and mod- 
esty of bearing, we e aware that our statement requires some 
qualification. It was, certainly, the rule ; but there have been 
exceptions. Our readers will remember our description of the 
rock temples of the neighborhood of Bombay, where edifices, 
dedicated to the worship of Siva, shock the sight of the least 
scrupulous travellers by the spectacle of intolerable obscenities. 
We explained, at the time, the cause of so extraordinary a 
phenomenon. 

VII. 

The religion of the Hellenes — idolatrous polytheism — can- 
not, therefore, be said to have been for them a source of cul- 
ture, except in the sense of material, sensual culture ; and, con- 
sequently, could not introduce true civilization, but only a 
false glitter covering real corruption. Yet it is insisted upon 
that, " as it was not declared a duty to the Greeks to become 
like the gods, no excuse for following their example could be 
drawn from the faults and crimes attributed to them. And, 
moreover, that these stories were esteemed, even by the vulgar, 
only as poetic inventions, and there was little concern about 
their truth -or their want of truth. There existed, independ- 
ently of those tales, the fear of the gods as higher beings who, 
on the whole, desired excellence, and abhorred, and some- 
times punished, crime. This punishment was inflicted in this 
world, etc." 

The obligation to imitate God was not, certainly, so posi- 



344 



GENTILISM. 



tively enjoined as a positive precept on the Greeks as it is on 
Christians, although, if we rernemher rightly, it was a duty on 
which great stress was laid by one of the seven wise men. 
Yet the principles of morality are so strict and universal that, 
in the opinion of all nations, they must extend to their gods 
if they are obligatory on man, and any violation of them by 
superior beings cannot but weaken, nay, deaden the human 
conscience. Even in the.fiase of those who do not know that 
they are bound to imitate God, at least this imitation cannot 
be a crime ; and every one, even the most rude and uncul- 
tivated, cannot but flatter himself that he has not been guilty 
of so heinous an offense, since he has but followed the example 
of higher beings, a great deal more perfect than man can be. 
Temptation is always more irresistible to weak humanity than 
to those who share in divine privileges and honors ; and even 
in the opinion of moralists, temptation, if violent, diminishes 
the responsibility and renders the fault more excusable. 

That these reflections acted on the pagan Greeks cannot be 
denied by any one accpiainted with the nation. Aristophanes 
has clearly expressed it in his " Clouds," in the discussion be- 
tween the two strange personages called Xoyoq dlicaiog and d'cJt/coc. 
The extent to which the thought influenced the moral acts of 
the people cannot be absolutely estimated, becaiise our con- 
science, from which we are inclined to form our judgment, is 
far more instructed and sensitive than that of pagans could be ; 
yet it is certain that conscience was not dead within them, and 
that, until they had practically destroyed it by their excesses, 
it spoke within them. Naturally their minds tried to find ex- 
cuses for the gratification of their passions ; and, in such cases, 
no doubt the example of the gods was one of the most success- 
ful arguments to suppress every qualm of conscience which 
might arise. That those stories were supposed, even by the 
vulgar, to be only poetic inventions, we are far from admitting. 
It is more probable that most of those who believed really in 



HEROIC GREECE. 



345 



the gods did not doubt the genuineness of the stories. Had 
they not the authority of Homer ? And was not Homer a 
theologian, as well as an historian, geographer, and poet ? 

There can be little doubt that, in the innermost depths of 
the Grecian soul, the fear — not of the gods, but — of God, spoke 
even louder than the sophism we are now discussing ; and that, 
on this account, they were morally guilty when they sinned in 
imitating their gods. Yet every one must admit, that, in their 
case, conscience ought to have been much less susceptible when 
the fear of God spoke on the one side, and the example of the 
gods drew them on the other. 

We ought not to be surprised, therefore, that moral corrup- 
tion increased fearfully from the age of Pericles downward. 
The comedies of Aristophanes are a sufficient proof of it, and if 
the w r orks of other dramatists, his contemporaries, had not per- 
ished, we should probably possess a much more powerful proof 
of the assertion. Independently of any other testimony, the 
universality of a single open and degrading passion, such as is 
well known to those acquainted with Greek literature, would 
sufficiently attest our assertion. The Grecian is the only nation 
which did not blush to avow it. And when the sense of the 
most common decency is so openly outraged there can be 
no doubt that society is thoroughly degraded, in spite of ex- 
terior appearances. It took a long time, however, to disor- 
ganize everything; because with such openly avowed vices, 
there was always in the nation a great activity of mind, and a 
strong development of physical exertion by colonization and 
trade. These saved the Greeks for many ages. They were 
too busy for society to fall into speedy decomposition. And 
this also accounts for the preservation and great apparent pro- 
gress of some modern nations in the midst of the most rapidly 
disorganizing corruption. There was, besides, in Hellenic man- 
ners, in spite of their rationalism, and at times cynic disposi- 
tion, a great simplicity, moderation, and opposition to excess, 



346 



GENTILISM. 



which preserved their correct taste and their artistic perfection 
for long ages after the decadency began. This simplicity of 
manners, which continued chiefly in their diet and apparel, and 
preserved them at all times from the excesses of Roman patri- 
cians under the Empire, was certainly derived from the golden 
guilelessness of the heroic age, whose touching stories of Cleobis 
and Biton, as related by Solon to Croesus (Herod., i., 31) ; of 
the twin sons of Aristodemus, King of Sparta (vi., 52), and 
many others found in ancient authors, were so well calculated 
to refine and ennoble the character of the people. The simple 
Doric customs of the primitive Spartans, whom Lycurgus 
spoiled later by his barbarous laws (vi., 58, 59, 60,) explain also 
the long-continuance of that nation, in spite of such loose mo- 
rality. For it is a fact strongly corroborative of what we aim 
at demonstrating, that the farther back we go in the history of 
man, the higher morality do we find in human society united 
with guilelessness, a noble simplicity, and, in spite of ignorance 
of books, profounder appreciation of the. mysteries surround- 
ing God and man. We find also a strong faith, strong in 
the Creator and rider of the universe, a thorough conviction of 
His incomprehensibility as a basis of adoration and worship, a 
dependence on Him at all the moments of their life, a clear 
perception of the superiority of the soul over the body, a con- 
tempt for the flimsy glitter of merely exterior appearances, and 
the kneenest relish of whatever is substantial and worthy of 
human aim. Hence food, dress, dwelling, all the surroundings 
of a patriarchal sage, show the solid greatness of the true master 
of creation ; but his submission to the ineffable laws of God, 
which are written in his heart, and impressed on his nature to 
the very marrow of his bones, proves his acquaintance with the 
higher world whence he came and where he is to go back. In 
the presence of such facts, who dares speak of the brute as the 
progenitor of man ? Is it not true, that in the first Brahmins 
of India, in the first inhabitants of Ethiopia and Egypt, in the 



HEEOIC GEEECE. 



347 



primitive Bactrians, in the Hellenes of the heroic age, as well 
— although in a far superior degree — as in the Hebrew patri- 
archs, the same spectacle is offered us of true heroes, real sages, 
great souls lodged in noble bodies, living on earth as in a dwell- 
ing' of a few days, yet with all the simple enjoyments that the 
earth can bestow on mortals 1 If they were obliged, in burning 
climes, to dwell in caves, they adorned those stupendous exca- 
vations with all the devices of art, which the traveller admires 
still in the far-Orient. If flocks fed them, it was in immense 
droves of splendid cattle that' they showed their wealth. If 
many of them dwelt in tents, it was to be more free to move on 
a free earth, and to show they were masters of the immense 
pastures where they could roam at will. Who can suppose 
that in all these circumstances there are. proofs of a low, grov- 
elling spirit akin to that of the brute ? Who can see there 
the mere animal emerging into consciousness ? But they pre- 
tend that the " primitive " man of whom they speak, lived 
many ages before the epoch we describe ; that, in the patriarchal 
period, man had already reached a high degree of civilization ; 
but it was by his own efforts and by many gradual steps that it 
had been attained. How is it then, that, having reached such a 
height of civilization, he began immediately to retrograde as 
we have shown he did ? If man's culture came from himself, 
and if it is his law to develop it, why did he stop at all, and did 
he not go on constantly improving % For in the theory we 
allude to, man is left to himself, and is perfectly able to take 
care of himself. He can have no master, but his own master- 
ship is sure. We answer that his own mastership is not sure, 
as history proves abundantly ; and if his privileges are gifts 
from a superior master, as we contend, as the generality of 
men have always believed and will, it is certain, continue to 
believe, then what we assert is the only rational hypothesis. 
Let them prove first that immense seiies of unsuccessful at- 
tempts ending in positive results at last ; let them prove their 



348 



GENTILISjVr. 



suppositions by stronger arguments than those they use ; let 
them brine; out facts better ascertained and more telling: on the 
question. Their great discoveries can be explained in a hun- 
dred ways better than the one they assume ; yet we may say 
that they have not placed yet on a solid footing the first step 
in their long progress of pretended demonstrations, and the 
origin and change of species is yet as great a mystery as when 
they began their researches ; at least many eminent naturalists, 
not over-loaded with Christian scruples, refuse yet to adopt 
their opinion. And we may confidently affirm that to satisfy 
all conscientious doubts about it, to convince of its truth the 
many learned men in natural sciences who remain incredulous, 
they will have to perfect their system, enter boldly their labo- 
ratories, and with the help of all the modern improvements and 
apparatus, which they know so well how to use, produce at last 
a new species whose existence cannot be gainsaid, and thus 
renew the old prodigies attributed to their first ancestor, the 
Caucasian Prometheus. Until that time we are afraid their 
theories will remain mere speculations, and people at last may 
turn them into merited ridicule. 



Till. 



From this necessary digression we return to the direct treat- 
ment of our subject. Hellenic polytheism, we saw, became 
positive idolatry, that is, the worship of " idols,", of " the 
works of man." And if this was true of any country, it was 
true of Greece. The description of the carpenter who, accord- 
ing to the inspired writer, selects the most useless part of a 
piece of wood to make a god of it, is generally considered as 
an ironical exaggeration. But it is not so. It was strictly true. 

Already long before, in Egypt, where art was much less cul- 
tivated for its own sake, where the myth remained always 



HEROIC GREECE. 



349 



much more pre-eminent than in Greece, we find this low and 
absurd kind of idolatry in full vogue, in the most strict sense, 
so as really to astonish the reader. We have the proof of it in 
Herodotus, and no one that we know has quoted the remark- 
able passage. Yet it deserves, indeed, to be quoted. It is 
taken from Euterpe, 172 : 

"Apries being dethroned, Amasis, who was of the Saitic 
district, reigned in his stead ; the name of the city from which 
he came was Siuph. At first the Egyptians despised him, as 
having been formerly a private person, and of no illustrious 
family ; but he conciliated them by his address and his want of 
stateliness. He had an infinite number of objects of art, and 
among them a golden foot-pan, in which Amasis himself and 
all his guests were accustomed to wash their feet. Having 
afterwards broken this in pieces, he made from it the statue of 
a god, and placed it in the most conspicuous part of the city. 
Directly the Egyptians, flocking to the image, paid it the 
greatest reverence. As soon as Amasis was informed of the 
success of the new worship, he called the Egyptians together, 
and thus explained the matter to them : ' The statue was made 
out of the foot-pan in which the Egyptians formerly vomited 
and washed their feet ; yet since it bad been made a god, they 
paid it an unbounded respect. Why not,' he proceeded to say, 
' act towards him as they did toward the foot-pan ? He was, 
indeed, before a private person, yet he had become their king, 
and they ought, therefore, to honor and respect him as such.' 
This artifice won completely the Egyptians over to him ; and 
from henceforth they obeyed his decrees and respected him as 
their king." 

Undoubtedly, if the Egyptians had not believed that a 
change had taken place in the foot-pan, by being made the 
statue of a god, and probably by receiving the usual rites of 
consecration, the ingenious device of Amasis would have been 
altogether lost on them. But what change could be supposed 



350 



GENTILISM. 



to have happened when the image of a god was made, and 
chiefly after it had received consecration? The theory of 
Iamblichus, who lived much later, it is true, but whose object 
was to prove that idolatry was at all times holy, reasonable, 
and true, that theory so strange to us, yet so natural to a pagan, 
must have been at the bottom of the reasoning faculty of all 
idolaters, when they prostrated themselves before their images. 
Iamblichus asserted that the god himself, or, at least, some 
emanation of his spirit, came to dwell in the image ; so that 
it was, in very deed, a god. It was thus literally true that the 
last stage of idolatry was, as the Book of "Wisdom expressly 
stated it, the adoration of the works of man. And their artistic 
perfection, under the chisel or the brush of Grecian sculptors 
and painters, increased, in the eyes of an imaginative people, 
their sacredness. The works of Phidias, of Praxiteles, of 
Polygnotus, were, according to public opinion, divine works. 
The epithet had been given at the first sight of their beauty. 
"When they were carried in gorgeous processions, placed on 
their high pedestals, surrounded with a large array of priests 
and ministers of religion ; when chiefly victims were led be- 
fore them to be sacrificed, and the perfumes of Arabia were 
lavishly consumed in their presence, who could refuse his 
assent to their real divinity % Hence they might be, in some 
sense, representative signs of higher beings ; they were infinitely 
more, namely, the gods themselves ; and it would have been 
sacrilegious to treat them not only with disrespect, but without 
the honor due to the rulers of the world. 

But we have not yet expressed in sufficiently clear language 
the strange idolatrous theory we are discussing. St. Augustine 
does it fully in his work, " De Civitate Dei " (Book YIIL, 
Chaps, xxiii., xxiv.), where he replies to arguments in the dia- 
logue "Asclepius," already known to our readers. It was 
ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus, but is known to have been 
published anonymously by some Platonist philosopher, per- 



HEROIC GREECE. 



351 



haps Apuleius. It expressed certainly the doctrine of this 
school. 

" Hermes Trismegistus," says the great African doctor, " has 
spoken of them (the dsemones) differently from Apuleius. 
This last author denies that they are gods ; yet, placing them 
as mediators hetween gods and men, so that they become indis- 
pensable to the man who wishes to communicate with ths 
gods, it is clear that he does not distinguish their worship 
from that of the higher gods. But the Egyptian Thoth says 
expressly ' that there are gods created by the Supreme One, 
and others created by man.' Any one hearing these last 
expressions will imagine that he speaks of images only which 
are truly the work of human hands. But he does more ; he 
asserts that the material images which are' seen and touched, 
and thus fall under our senses, are, as it were (velut), the bodies 
of the gods. Inside of these reside, by invitation, certain 
spirits endowed with the power either of harming or of bene- 
fiting those who render them divine honors and worship. For 
man to possess the art of uniting together invisible spirits with 
material substances, so that the images (simulacra) become, so 
to say, bodies animated by the spirits to whom they have been 
dedicated and subjected, is, according to Trismegistus, to 
create really gods, and thus man has received the great and 
admirable power of giving existence to gods." 

The same crude language is used repeatedly in the same 
Hermetic dialogue. One single passage more shall render the 
repulsive doctrine more striking and clear : 

"As the Father and Lord of all," says Hermes, " has made 
eternal gods to His own image, thus our humanity has figured 
its own gods to its own likeness and resemblance." " You 
speak here of statues, oh, Trismegistus !" exclaims Asclepius ; 
and Hermes answers : " Statues, indeed, oh, Asclepius ! thy 
eyes can see ; but why shouldst thou hesitate to believe ? They 

are animated statues, full of a divine npirit, and endowed with 

• 24 



352 



GENTILISM. 



a powerful energy ; they are statues which can foretell events, 
and declare them by the casting of lots, or by the inspiration 
of the seer, or in dreams, or in many other ways ; statues 
which can bring to men diseases or cure them, and thus cause 
joy or sadness." 

There was not, therefore, any exaggeration in the text of 
the inspired writer, whose tale of the carpenter and his work 
naturally brings a smile on the lips of the reader. For it is 
clear, from the above quotation, that, in the opinion not of the 
vulgar alone, but of philosophers, educated men, and pretended 
sages, the statues and pictures adored by pagans were true 
gods in the estimation of the worshippers. 

This was at last the religion of refined, philosophical, artis- 
tic Greece ; and if on account of the universal taste of the 
people there was generally, in the exterior ceremonies, an ap- 
pearance of decency, of propriety, of aesthetic culture, differ- 
ent certainly from the tumult and uproarious noise of tha 
monstrous processions of Egypt, or of modern Hindostan, we 
ought not to think that everything was poetical, tasteful, enchant- 
ing. What was in Sparta the worship of Diana Orthia, at whose 
altar Plutarch testifies that " he had seen many boys expire 
under the lash ?" Yet it is pretended that Lycurgus had, by 
his laws, substituted a simple flagellation for the immolation of 
human victims. The gossiping philosopher of Chasronea, 
when he wrote this in his " Life of Lycurgus," boasted of the 
refinement of his age which had abolished all previous barba- 
rous customs ; and he lived to see the second age of Christianity, 
Avhich he does not seem to have known ; yet how many other 
senseless and monstrous rites existed still, and continued to 
exist, until they were put an end to by a pure religion ? It is 
known that Iamblichus and many other Neoplatonists were 
great partisans of magic ; and the magic of those days was 
like that of the modern tantras of Hindostan, the bloody, Sa- 
tanic handmaid of the Evil one. Horace has described it in 



HEEOIC GKEECE. 



353 



one of his poems (Epod. v.) ; and Julian, the apostate, worthy 
follower of Nero in this particular, thought also that future 
events could be read in the living entrails of expiring human 
victims. These words may be the expression of an indignant 
feeling ; but it is a fair and righteous one, in the presence of 
these undeniable and horrible facts. 

But what we would chiefly call the attention of our readers 
to on this subject, is the extent to which divisions were intro- 
duced amongst mankind by these idolatrous rites. Religion 
was no more national ; it had become purely local. And al- 
though there has been, we hope, no deviation in our train of 
thoughts, although the main subject we proposed for our inves- 
tigations has been steadily kept in view, and no side issue has 
been at any time allowed to interfere with it; yet we must be 
allowed, at the moment of considering the state to which 
Greece and, we may say, the whole of Europe, was reduced at 
last, to recall to our mind the religious state of the world as it 
was at first, as God intended it should remain. It was, we 
saw, a truly Catholic religion which the primitive revelation es- 
tablished. All nations had received the same truths, the same 
traditions, the same hopes, and the same worship. The earth 
itself had been created for that object, and mankind, on its 
surface, could have remained one family. But their pride and 
their passions interfered with the divine plan. Gradually the 
unity and brotherhood of mankind was exchanged for divisions, 
continually increasing, until religion itself was rent into frag- 
ments, and from universal it became national. Pantheism, 
taking a different shape in different tribes, lent to each a pai*- 
ticular scheme of creation, and introduced as many cosmogo- 
nies as there were peoples. Polytheistic idolatry supervening 
everywhere, rendered religion everywhere national, and it be- 
came invariably an affair of the State. Thus wars between 
nations became really wars between gods ; and treaties of alli- 
ance or of common defence, became compacts between the 



354 



GENTILISM. 



deities of the contracting parties. ~No one thought he could 
worship the gods of another race ; and the idea was rather, 
everywhere, one of hostility against all foreign religions. The 
Eomans were the first, as we shall see, to proclaim a spirit of 
toleration or at least non-interference ; and this happened just 
on the eve of the preaching of Christianity. The well-known 
animosity, for instance, of the Persians against the gods of 
Egypt and of Greece, which was their chief motive for de- 
stroying their temples and their statues ; the constant clannish 
wars, in Egypt itself, of city against city, certainly occasioned 
in many cases by the mutual hatred against their respective 
divinities ; the well-known fact that in the opinion of all 
ancient peoples their national gods took side for them against 
all foreign tribes, who received help likewise from their own 
divinities, many other details of the annals of antiquity supply 
incontestible evidence of the truth of our hypothesis ; which 
may thus be considered an axiom of ancient history. 

Greece, likewise, in the course of time, came to have a 
national religion. Homer made it, and it was then coextensive 
with the race. But it soon showed a tendency to become local, 
and, at last, arrived at the last state of decomposition in be- 
coming individual. 

That the national religion in Greece had, from the begin- 
ning, a tendency to become local, is evident from the great 
number of gods of the same name which came finally to be 
adopted as special deities in various Hellenic localities. It 
would require a long dissertation on the various divinities 
known as Zeus, Hercules, Apollo, Hermes, Aphrodite, Arte- 
mis, Athene, etc., to assign to each their several local districts. 
Such was not the intention of Homer, the founder of the bril- 
liant superstition. There is in his great poem only one Zeus, 
one Hercules, one Apollo, etc. But it can not be doubted 
that, in course of time, great and essential differences came to 
be admitted in the various personages who bore those names. 



HEROIC GEEECE. 



355 



Not to tire our readers with, erudite details, which, could not 
be, after all, but incomplete, we prefer, as usual, to copy a very 
remarkable passage of St. Clement of Alexandria, whose list 
of such gods is certainly incomplete, but which, from its 
graphic character, cannot but make a lasting impression on the 
mind of the reader. It is taken from his " Exhortation to the 
Heathen," Chap. ii. The great Alexandrian doctor, it is true, 
in this passage, selects hi 5 facts to suit the system of Euhe- 
merus, of which he declares himself a strong partisan ; and 
which, after all, was unable to give an account of all myths. 
Still the facts quoted here are undoubted, and they are suffi- 
cient for our purpose. He says : 

" Agamemnon is said by Staphilus to be worshipped as a J u- 
piter in Sparta ; and Phanocles, in his book of the ' Brave 
and Fair,' relates that Agamemnon, King of the Hellenes, 
erected the temple of Argennian Aphrodite, in honor of Ar- 
gennus, his friend. An Artemis, named the Strangled, is wor- 
shipped by the Arcadians, as Callimachus says in his 1 Book of 
Causes ;' and at Methymna another Artemis had divine honors 
paid her, viz., Artemis Condylitis. There is also the temple 
of another Artemis — Art3mis Podagra (the gout) — in Laco- 
nica, as Sosibius says. Polemo tells of an image of a yawning 
Apollo ; and again of another image, reverenced in Elis, of a 
guzzling Apollo. Then the Eleans sacrifice to Zeus, the averter 
of flies ; and the Romans sacrifice to Hercules, the averter of 
flies ; and to Fever, and to Terror, whom also they reckon 
among the attendants of Hercules. I pass over the Argives, 
who worshipped Aphrodite, the opener of graves. The Ar- 
gives and Spartans reverence Artemis Chelytis, or the cougher, 
from x&vttelv, which in their speech signifies to cough. 

" Do you imagine from what sources these details have been 
quoted ? Only such as are furnished by yourselves are here 
adduced ; and you do not seem to recognize your own writers, 
whom I call as witnesses against your unbelief. Poor wretches 



356 GENTILISM. 

that ye are, who have filled with unholy jesting the whole com 
pass of your life — a life in reality devoid of life ! 

" Is not Zens, the hald-headed, worshipped in Argos ; and 
another Zeus, the avenger, in Cyprus ? Do not the Argives 
sacrifice to Aphrodite Peribaso (the protectress), and the Athe- 
nians to Aphrodite Iletsera (the courtesan), and the Syracusans 
to Aphrodite Callipygos, whom Nieander has somewhere called 
Calliglutos ?" — the pnn cannot be translated — " I pass over in 
silence just now Dionysus Choiropsales. The Sieyonians rever- 
ence this deity, whom they have constituted the god of the mu- 
Uebria— the patron of filthiness — and religiously honor as the 
author of licentiousness. Such, then, are their^gods; such are 
the}- also who make mockery of the gods, or rather mock and 
insult themselves. How much better are the Egyptians, who, 
in their towns and villages, pay divine honors to irrational crea- 
tures, than the Greeks, who worship such gods as these?" 

This passage is all-sufficient to show how the former national 
gods of Greece had gradually become local deities. A whim, 
a caprice, a trivial circumstance, induced the population of a 
city, a town, a village, to erect a temple to some divinity which 
had taken their fancy. The building arose. When the ques- 
tion of the name came to be considered, the particular designa- 
tion of some well-known god presented itself, but coupled with 
an epithet, a paraphrase, a specification, which rendered altoge- 
ther local some hitherto national god. And these designations 
were, in general, accompanied with such ridiculous, or even infa- 
mous, particularities that, as St. Clement said : " The Egyptians 
did better, who, in their towns and villages paid divine honors to 
irrational creatures, than the Greeks who worshipped such gods 
as these." To which he added, to explain better his meaning 
— and it offers an appropriate commentary on what, through- 
out this work, we are endeavoring to establish — " For if the 
Egyptian deities are beasts, they are not adulterous and libidi- 
nous, and seek pleasure in nothing that is contrary to nature .... 



HEEOIO GKEECE. 



357 



But if the Egyptians are said to be divided in their objects of 
cult ; if the Syenites worship the braize-fish, and if the maiote 
— this is another fish — is worshipped by those who inhabit Ele- 
phantine ; if the Oxyrinchites likewise adore a fish which takes 
its name from their country ; if, again, the Heraclitopolites 
worship the ichneumon, the inhabitants of Sais and of Thebes a 
sheep, the Leucopolites a wolf, the Cynopolites a dog, the Mem- 
phites Apis, the Mendesians a goat, etc. ; you, who are altoge- 
ther better than the Egyptians (I shrink from saying worse), 
who are never done laughing every day of your lives at the 
Egyptians, what are some of you, too, with respect to brute 
beasts ? Of your number the Thessalians pay divine homage 
to storks, in accordance with ancient custom ; and the Thebans 
to weasels, for their assistance at the birth of Hercules. And 
again, are not the Thessalians reported to worship ants, since 
they have learned that Zeus, in the likeness of an ant, had in- 
tercourse with Eurymedusa, the daughter of CHtor, and begot 
Myrmedon ? Polemo, too, relates that the people who inhabit 
the Troad worship the mice of the country, which they call 
Sminthoi, because they gnawed the strings of their enemies' 
bows, and from those mice Apollo has received his epithet of 
Sminthian. Heraclides, in his work, ' Regarding the Building 
of Temples in Acamania,' says, that at the place where the 
promontory of Actium is, and the Temple of Apollo of Actium, 
they offer to the flies the sacrifice of an ox. ISTor must I forget 
the Samians ; these, as Euphorion says, reverence the sheep ; 
nor the Syrians, who inhabit Phoenicia, of whom some revere 
doves, and others fishes, with as excessive veneration as the 
Eleans do Zeus.'"' 

These details prove abundantly what had become, at last, of 
the religion of the Hellenes. It had become split up into end- 
less divisions, and locabzed. Old, respectable traditions, con- 
taining real myths, intended at first to convey solemn truths, 
had been long before replaced by other traditions which could, 



3.58 



GENTILISM. 



no doubt, have been traced historically to the whole race, or at 
least to some great Hellenic tribes. These, in their turn, had 
given way to local tales, perhaps still connected with local his- 
tory. And, finally, the whole ended in ridiculous fables admit- 
ted as truth in some particular spot, village, township, hamlet ; 
and of these at last the religion of the Greeks almost every- 
where consisted. 

IX. 

But there was yet a still lower descent, although that seems, 
indeed, to be scarcely possible. This was the decomposition of 
religious feeling into merely individual emotion. We of these 
days can readily understand it, because Protestantism produces 
everywhere something very similar in the universal decompo- 
sition of belief, and in the complete disintegration of sects, 
everything being reduced to individual feeling. 

The riellenes were a profoundly reflecting people. They 
pretended 'to be always guided by reason. But human reason 
could not admit the fables into which the exterior religion 
had resolved itself. Hence, for a great number of them, relig- 
ion hadjost all its power over their mind. To the uneducated 
people, the popular worship, on account of its absurdities, be- 
came finally a gross superstition. Everything, consequently, 
came to be worshipped by them, and every one must have his 
own particular belief. The educated part of the race, more 
able to systematize their thoughts, impressed yet with religious 
feelings, since man cannot exist without them, were reduced to 
form to themselves religious theories of their own, and to wor- 
ship the beings who, in their ideas, were the real rulers of the 
world. These men, therefore, so proud of their science, of 
their literary attainments, of their artistic culture, were, of ne- 
cessity, as superstitious as the common people, although in a 
different way. Thus, in all alike, religion became degraded to 



HEKOIC GREECE. 



359 



an irrational and grovelling superstition. But superstition can- 
not be anything else than an individual disease of the soul. 
This certainly happened to the Greeks. 

A similar process took place amongst the Romans of the same 
epoch ; and the phenomenon has been described with such 
graphic power and such force by Mr. F. de Champagny in his 
"Antonins," that we cannot do better than transfer to our 
pages a short passage of this admirable work (Livre, vi., Ch. 
iii.) : " Some philosophers were then trying (under Marcus 
Aurelius) to close against man all the doors leading to God ; 
but other philosophers knew how to vindicate the rights of the 
human soul, attested by its needs : ' Atrocious sentence !' cried 
Apuleius (de Deo Socratis), 1 must men remain separated for 
ever from the communion with immortal beings, imprisoned 
in the hell of this life, deprived of all communication with the 
gods ! No celestial guide to watch over them as the shepherd 
over his flock ! . . . . No superior being to curb their passions, 
alleviate their sufferings, and relieve their poverty !' . . . . This 
outcry of the human conscience, which no philosophy will 
ever be able to repress, broke forth, then as ever, from the 
breast of all. 

" More than this ; instead of being smothered, as it is gen- 
erally to-day, by an abnormal and morbid philosophy, religion, 
that absolute need of man, over-excited by the impure atmos- 
phere which surrounded it, went rather too far, and overstep- 
ped the proper limits. The idea of God remaining obscure to 
the soul, the soul looked outside of God himself for something 
which it could adore, hope in, submit and pray to . . . What 
it adored, ran after, dreaded, did not even receive the name of 
God ; it was Nature, Elements, Force, Fate, Necessity ; under 
the name of Fatum, the soul divinized whatever is inert, un- 
intelligent, insensible. The soul, certainly, did not know the 
object of its adoration ; yet admitting some supernatural 
agency, without inquiring what it was, it went in all directions } 



360 



GENTILISM. 



trying to find by its looks and its prayers a secret force, an un- 
known power, corporal rather than intellectual, worldly rather 
than heavenly, superhuman, but not divine. 

" Thus, to tell the truth, no one believed, and all were super- 
stitious ; no one had any religious conviction : all felt a real relig- 
ious passion. Every one followed that course with as much 
more impetuosity, as there was no more any dogma to trace 
the way. The moral disease which had produced polytheism 
was as active as ever, although thus reduced to individualism ; 
and every successive day of the pagan world generated a new 
paganism in human souls." 

From this passage we ought not to conclude that there was 
a complete separation between the superstitions of the en- 
liohteued and those of the vulgar. "The atheist himself," 
says the same author, somewhere else, " was not above the fear 
of magic, dreams, astrology. The epicurean Caesar had his 
talismans. Tiberius, an open atlieist, desjnsed so much more 
the gods, says Suetonius, as he believed the more in his astrol- 
abe. Pliny the Elder denies the soul and insults God ; but he 
does not think he derogates to his dignity of a free-thinker by 
having faith in magical incantations to cure bodily sores. 
Tacitus denies Providence; yet he speaks of omens, dreams, 
prodigies, without any apparent hesitation or doubt. . . . Juve- 
nal laughs boldly at mythological traditions about the ' time 
when Juno was yet a little girl, and J upiter a simple citizen 
dwelling in the caves of mount Ida.' Still, when one of his 
friends is saved from shipwreck, Juvenal offers a hind in sacri- 
fice to Juno, and a young bull to Jupiter, because he feels the 
need of thanking somebody, and does not know how to do it 
otherwise." 

Have we not shown, too, how in the dialogue " Asclepius " — 
published by Neoplatonists, and circulated by them as a 
rational explanation of polytheism — Hermes instructs his dis- 
ciple about those " consecrated statues, full of a Divine energy, 



HEEOIC GEEECE. 



361 



directing the casting of lots, speaking in dreams, inspiring the 
predictions of seers, and showing th3ir divinity in many other 
ways ? " 

Hence philosophers, as well as the common people, went 
still to consult oracles ; they stretched themselves, at night, in 
the temples, on the Weeding hide of the hull or of the roe, 
which had heen immolated at their expense, trying to sleep 
and to have dreams, which would certainly he the expression 
of the will of the gods. For they still read Homer frequently, 
and Homer has. repeated several times : u nal yap r' ovap en kioq 
e?T(." 

Were we to quote all the passages of the Fathers of the 
Church in the three first centuries, and all the remarkable 
texts of pagan authors during the same ages, containing proofs 
of the totally rotten superstition of Hellenism at the time, and 
chiefly of its completely local and individual character, we 
should fill volumes of quotations. We have, however, stated 
enough for our purpose. It only remains that we recall to the 
memory of the reader, what we have proved of the primitive 
religion of the race, chiefly of its monotheism and respectable 
traditions coming evidently from a primitive revealed doctrine, 
in order to compare it with the senseless fables which composed 
the whole religious belief of the nation at the end. 

Such had been the result of the " culture," as it is called, 
introduced by the polytheism of Homer. All the artistic per- 
fection, the literary excellence, the philosophical acumen of 
the race, had brought only religious disorganization and myth- 
ical absurdity. The same had been the case in Hindostan, in 
Egypt, in all Oriental countries. We must admit, consequently, 
that the progress had only been backwards : that a brilliant civil- 
ization is not always the best ; that human society requires 
more than the glare of what is called " refinement," to have 
happiness insured, truth really developed, and the imprescript- 
ible needs of the human soul forever secured. 



362 



GE1STTILISM. 



Yet we ought not to imagine that what had been trans- 
mitted from patriarchal times had altogether perished ; that no 
trace whatever remained of the primitive revelation ; and that 
this inestimable gift of God, after having blessed mankind in 
Europe for a short period at first, had been snatched away, or 
wantonly dissipated, without a shadow of remembrance. We 
are quite convinced that something of it always remained, 
although the great mass of the people was altogether uncon- 
scious of it ; and to this we must ascribe the fervor, yes, the 
real enthusiasm with which the Hellenic race admitted Chris- 
tianity. All the Greek Fathers of the Church are unanimous 
in finding, in their old authors, innumerable fragments of 
truth, for which Eusebius coined an admirable word when he 
said it was prceparatio evangelica. To be sure, many of those 
texts adduced by the primitive fathers would not be so readily 
admitted by a sound modern criticism. Yet many are certainly 
striking ; and modem scholars have, in their learned investiga- 
tions, discovered others which had escaped the Fathers of the 
Church themselves, unaccjuainted as they were with Hindoo 
and Egyptian anticpuities. To know thoroughly Gentilism, to 
appreciate its real value, apart from the mass of errors and 
superstitions into which it finally degenerated, we must try to 
sift the golden grain from the chaff and the baneful seeds, and 
collect together something, at least, of that treasure so abun- 
dant and so rich at first, so scanty and so insignificant at last, 
still always precious, and bearing yet the impress of its divine 
origin. This we will endeavor to do in the following chapter. 



CHAPTER TIL 



HELLENIC PHILOSOPHY AS A CHANNEL OF TRADITION. 
I. 

The precious fragments of a primitive revelation are found 
scattered through the writings of nearly all ancient Greek 
and Latin authors, and it would require an immense labor to 
collect them together. We can only select a few of them. 
And the plan we propose is to adduce first those that have 
been preserved and transmitted by philosophers, and pass from 
them to the poets, more rich yet in tokens of this heavenly 
treasure. 

Philosophy, now called Science, was born in Greece. The 
Oriental and Southern nations never knew it in the sense we 
attach to the word. The Hindoo Sankhya drew its doctrines 
as much from religious tradition as from pure reason. But 
the Greek philosophers, with the exception of the traditionalist 
branch — Pythagoreans and Platonists — left entirely aside what 
had been handed down from primitive times, and proposed to 
themselves to study the exterior world and human nature 
merely from the data of their own mind or senses. Thus pure 
rationalism started on its career, destined to invade the whole 
of Europe, and to give to the Japhetic or Aryan races the 
character peculiar to them of scientific investigators or phys- 
icists. 

Whoever enters on philosophic studies, soon realizes that, 
when he is provided with the necessary preliminaries, namely, 
language and logic, he has to examine first the principles of 

(363) 



364 



GENTILISM. 



things (ontology and pure metaphysics) ; then the Author of 
the "World, whoever he may he (Theodicsea and Cosmogony) ; 
and, finally, coming to man himself, he has to inquire into his 
nature, and chiefly find out, if he can with his reason alone, 
what is the great object of human life (the summum ionum) 
which must lay at the bottom of ethics. These studies are 
anterior and far superior to the mere observation of exterior 
phenomena, which is the great object of physics in all its 
branches, beginning by mathematics — the necessary means 
of investigation — which stands for this material branch of 
inquiry in lieu of logic and philology for the previous 
one. 

The Greeks, at first, did not propose to themselves so vast 
an amount of mental work. But their very first efforts re- 
quired that, in course of time, they should go through the 
whole. Two mighty considerations, however, engrossed their 
attention on the very threshold of inquiry : these were the 
origin of the universe (cosmogony) and the summum bonum j 
of these alone are we bound to speak. 

The same had taken place in Ilindostan ; but the Yedas 
had anticipated the solution. According to them, the world 
had emanated from Brahma, and man wa3 to return to the 
source of his being. The Sankhya, or Hindoo philosophy, 
must admit these as first principles, and only give its own- solu- 
tion, or rather explanation. In Greece, no authoritative voice 
had spoken. The philosopher was free to direct his investiga- 
tions as he chose, and publish to the woild what his reason 
alone had demonstrated. Hence a perfect avalanche of systems 
was immediately let loose on the country. Most of them, if 
not all, were completely atheistic. Brahma, Zeus, Amun, or 
whatever was the name by which the Supreme Being was 
known, had evidently taken no part in the creation of the 
world. The world had made itself. The only question was 
to know which was the first element, Water ? or Air ? or Fire ? 



HELLENIC PHILOSOPHY. 



365 



As soon as the first link of the chain was found, the whole 
chain unfolded itself majestically. 

When, later on, ethical subjects came under consideration, the 
same strange phenomena took place in Greece with respect to 
the summum bonum, the foundation of all ethics. Was man 
made for knowledge, or for virtue, or for pleasure ? This was 
the theoretical question, which was always decided without any 
reference to the Eternal Lawgiver, who nevertheless speaks to 
all through human conscience. Evidently rationalism was 
early in the field, and promised to Europe long ages of fine- 
spun theories and well-balanced systems. Yet the question 
here presents itself, Had not the Greeks then a religion ? Did 
they not believe in the gods, if not in a supreme one ? What 
did the religious authorities of the race say — those who had the 
guardianship of religion % What did even the people, always 
fervently religious in Greece, say and do when such atheism 
was professed ? 

To give to these questions an answer altogether satisfactory 
is difficult. Yet we must try to suggest, at least, the one 
which seems to us the most probable and sufficient. The con- 
crete principle which, in our opinion, renders all this less 
shocking and inexplicable is this — State religion. A great 
change had taken place among the Hellenes in the ages imme- 
diately preceding Thales and the other philosophers. From the 
heroic Pelasgic age the world had passed over to the purely 
republican and Hellenic ; and in the change, State religion had 
been established everywhere — State religion which considered 
only the exterior worship as everything, the doctrine as noth- 
ing, or next to nothing. Let us examine this a little more in 
detail. 

Our readers remember what was said of the extraordinary 
difference existing in Greece between the people described by 
Homer and the people we see inhabiting sometime after Hel- 
lenic cities : government, manners, customs, ideas, conse- 



366 



GENTILISM. 



quently all, is changed. And, unfortunately, as nearly all 
the works of the writers of the intervening period have per- 
ished, we have not the least means of judging how the change 
was effected. We only see that, in the first period, all the 
tribes live apart, each with its own chieftain governing the sept 
as a true monarch ; and, in the second, many tribes have coal- 
esced to form States with republican institutions. In the first, 
religion is intrusted to bards and seers, who sing to the people 
long poems containing the former traditions, enveloped in 
myths, it is true, yet conveying often great truths, and proclaim- 
ing a relatively pure moral law ; in the second, religion is alto- 
gether a State affair, with State rites, State gods, and really no 
priesthood ; the whole concerned about completely exterior 
worship, without any dogmatic teaching and moral exhortation. 
In the first, we see the simple manners of an agricultural and 
pastoral people, abounding in all things which make life easy, 
but with no settled system of trade and colonization ; building 
already cities with tasteful edifices and dwellings, yet never 
concentrating their efforts in close agglomerations of men, and 
preferring still to breathe the free air of the open country. 
In the second, we have the great mass of the population intent 
chiefly on trade, colonization, war, city life, and art. It looks as 
if it was question of two races altogether different. Yet we 
saw that, most probably, the Pelasgic race had gradually passed 
into the Hellenic, and this one was the second part of a series 
begun by the first. 

These considerations render it more easy to understand the 
freedom of inquiry, unaffected by religious feeling of any 
kind which prevailed in the second period from its beginning. 
They spoke constantly of liberty, complete freedom ; no law 
prevented them from embracing the various careers of com- 
merce, of agriculture, of study, of art, of propagandism of 
their ideas. Provided they conformed to the State religion, 
they had satisfied all that piety to the gods required ; and we 



HELLENIC PHILOSOPHY. 



367 



have no doubt that at the very time Epicurus was publicly lec- 
turing on his atomic theory, or worse still, on his summum 
bonum, he was most exact in paying his duties to the temples, 
and offering victims, probably, to the deities he did not believe 
in. It is, indeed, surprising how soon the doctrine of the /State 
god had penetrated the Greek mind, not only among the fa- 
natic Spartans, but among all other tribes, chiefly in refined and 
rationalistic Athens. It was not Lycurgus alone who preached 
it to his rude Lacedemonians, and succeeded in making it the 
chief, or rather the only, belief of the nation ; but, in all other 
parts of Greece, the same had taken place, we do not know 
precisely how. Socrates himself was so fully persuaded of the 
necessity of the doctrine, that he admitted it, even when the 
measures enacted by it were evidently unjust and barbarous. 
And he was consistent even against his own interest, since 
knowing that he had been unjustly condemned, yet he remain- 
ed in prison, resolved to die, although he could have escaped, 
because " a citizen must obey even an unjust decree." If a 
man is bound to submit to death unjustly, when he can escape 
without any injury to a third person, he will be bound like- 
wise to obey the State in whatever he is commanded to do. 
Since obedience to the State is thus placed above any right, 
human and divine, he will have to worship what he knows is 
not god, if the State pronounces it to be god ; but the worship 
will be sufficient if it be merely exterior, and without the as- 
sent of the mind. In this system there is no truth, there is no 
right, there is only the omnipotence of the State. To this 
state had Greece already arrived ; and the strange anomaly of 
philosophers teaching in fact atheism,, when they professed 
outwardly the belief of the State, has nothing which need 
surprise us. Hence Epicurus could tell his- hearers that " the 
fear of the gods " is the great error which renders human life 
intolerable ; and that, by striking at this superstition and free- 
ing men forever from such a bugbear, he was their benefactor; 
25 



368 



GENTILISM. 



yet by submitting in appearance to tbe " established faith," by 
admitting gods in name, although denying them in reality, he 
placed himself above the possibility of a suspicion of atheism, 
and could continue to teach peaceably what destroyed, in fact, 
all religion. And Epicurus was not alone. He was not the 
first. He was only one among many. He merely applied 
practically the doctrines of his predecessors, chiefly of Anaxa- 
goras and Democritus. In fact, the fanciful dreams of Hellenic 
philosophers, chiefly of the physical school, were already as 
numerous and as deadly as the systems of our days which suc- 
ceed each other so rapidly, and would soon spread atheism 
broadcast over the world, if mankind, having possessed truth 
traditionally for so many ages, was not too profoundly impress- 
ed with the consciousness of it, to surrender its inward beliaf 
in Gocl at the dictation of learned sophists or brilliant writers. 
Yes, the Hellas of twenty-five centuries ago was already the 
Babel of our system-mongers. It would, however, appear at 
first sight, that what we are now insisting on is completely op- 
posed to the object we have in view, which is to show that the 
primitive doctrines transmitted to the Hellenes by their Eastern 
ancestors, were never altogether dead or inefficient, even in 
the worst times of idolatry and unbelief. This has not escaped 
us. But it occurred to us, that, if we directed attention to the 
innate spirit of rationalism so early develoj)ed in the race, and 
destined to spread so far and so wide, it might serve to bring 
out in stronger relief what we are now about to urge, since 
with such an early inclination to practical atheism and material- 
ism, we see in Greece a long line of great men intent on a 
completely different object. 

We mean to speak of traditionalist philosophers, and we 
have mentioned the Pythagorean and Platonieian systems — 
namely, the Italic and the Academic schools. To a considera- 
tion of these, then, we now proceed. 



HELLENIC PHILOSOPHY. 



369 



II. 

In the midst of those numerous philosophical sects in 
Greece, founded merely on individual reason, — even in the do- 
main of religious truth ; all appealing to it as to the standard 
of belief, all warring with each other, jet all proclaiming the 
paramount claims of human intellect to the possession of ab- 
solute certainty with respect to the things of heaven and earth, — 
it is consoling to find two great and influential bodies of men 
agreeing with the others as to the power given to the human 
mind of apprehending truth and discerning it from mere soph- 
ism, yet proclaiming aloud that man has not been left without 
any other guide than his reason ; that there are eternal, divine 
principles, attainable by human intellect, yet which it will 
never reach unless they are revealed from above ; that primi- 
tively heaven spoke, and the divine word was not given to be 
immediately lost in the universal confusion of human speech ; 
but that some men have fortunately received it and kept it, 
more or less perfectly ; that the only important affair is to 
find those depositaries of divine wisdom, and when they have 
been found, to gain access to them, and learn from their lips 
what otherwise we should never discover, namely, the true 
origin of this universe and the real suramum bonum of human 
life. 

If all this series of reasoning is not textually expressed in 
the belief of the Italic and Academic schools, it is undoubt- 
edly sufficiently apparent from the history of their founders, 
and the doctrines they taught. Both Pythagoras and Plato 
did not think that they could alone find out the truth on such 
important subjects of inquiry. Both travelled extensively, and 
Pythagoras at least went certainly to Egypt, and most probably 
to India, if not to the Celtic countries, to interrogate the wise 
men of the most ancient nations, who were more likely to pos- 



370 GENTILISM. 

sess the divine utterances at the very origin of man. Both 
finally brought from those foreign countries doctrines more or 
less pure, but which they both superadded to the teachings of 
their own reason. Hence we call them traditionalist philoso- 
phers ; not implying that they set aside and despised what 
their own intellect saw clearly ; but that they thought there 
was, for some questions, a light superior to that of their own 
mind, which it was the duty of the wise man to consult. 

If we consider Pythagorism and Platonism apart, the first 
is certainly remarkable for a well-known and perfectly well-as- 
certained fact ; namely, that all the disciples were bound to 
submit to the ipse dixit of the master, who had himself re- 
ceived several of his dogmas from other men. This alone 
would put the real stamp of traditionalism on the Italic school. 
But besides this important feature, it is likewise well known 
that the Pythagoreans, after the example of their maste:-, con- 
sidered of great moment the various Orphic traditions then 
floating all over Greece. They collected them, preserved them, 
and compared them together, thus trying to connect their own 
time with antiquity, and to prevent the disintegration of all 
ancient doctrines by the ever-moving agitation of mythological 
diversity going on under their eyes. We are sure that the poor 
fragments of Orphic lore which remained in the time of Plato, 
and which have been preserved to our very days, were the 
result of this particular care of the Italic school. Hence when 
Pythagorism, after more than a century of almost total disap- 
pearance in Italy and Greece, revived about two hundred years 
before Christ, Orphic societies rose up at the same time, in 
the same countries ; and this well-known fact has not been suf- 
ficiently dwelt upon even by modern investigators, to show the 
true character of the sect of Pythagoras. . It was, in fact, a 
real protest, in the name of antiquity, against the deluge of 
philosophical absurdities which the ever-gushing source of Hel- 
lenic rationalism poured constantly over the devoted field of 



HELLENIC PHILOSOPHY. 



Europe. Unfortunately the Pythagoreans were too few in 
numbers ; for they limited their society chiefly to the aristo- 
cratic class, which was soon overwhelmed by the flood of de- 
mocracy that finally prevailed in Greece. 

Our readers, we hope, will not understand us to say that 
everything was pure in the Italic school, that no error crept 
into it, and that Pythagoras himself had brought from his 
travels the real outpouring of the primitive l'evelatiou . Nothing 
is farther from our thoughts. Egypt and India had strangely 
degenerated, even in his own time, and Orpheus himself, that 
multiform personage, spoke as glowingly of the Homeric gods 
as of Zeus ; deriving His name from Zi)v and from Alg . Py- 
thagoras brought from Egypt or India his doctrine of metemp- 
sychosis, as a system of expiation, and thus tried to engraft 
on the Western tree the most flourishing branch of supersti- 
tion blooming in the East. His celebrated speculations on 
numbers must have been brought from Egypt likewise, and 
were not derived from any respectable antiquity ; although their 
chief significance, as admitted by modern interpreters, namely, 
the even and the odd, unity and duality, the single and the mul- 
tiple, appears to have been fundamentally the great primitive 
Hindoo and Egyptian doctrine of the world coming forth from 
the Supreme, and may consequently have been a system of cos- 
mogony, erroneous indeed, yet entirely opposed to the insen- 
sate theories of Greek physical philosophers, and far superior to 
them. There is no doubt that the primitive traditions had been 
already, to a great degree, obscured, when the philosopher of 
Croton, in Southern Italy, wished to make them the basis of his 
system. Hence, his philosophy could not save the Greek 
world. He himself taught his disciples to conform exteriorly 
to the prevalent polytheism, although it is sure that he did not 
believe in it. For, if many false theories and ideas were by 
him propagated, and upheld by the authority, of his great name, 
it is certain that his esoteric disciples believed in One God, the 



372 



GENTILISM. 



Creator and Ruler of the world, infinitely above all inferior 
gods and demons. Hence, on creation and the summum bonum 
the teaching of Pythagoras may he said to have been on the 
side of the truth ; and, if not completely, at least far more so 
than were the atheistical and materialist doctrines of the phi- 
losophers of his time. Thus, again, is confirmed the proposition 
with which we started, namely, that if we trace back the his- 
tory of mankind in any part of the globe, as near to his origin 
as it is possible for us to do, we find invariably the great and 
saving dogma of One God, Creator and Ruler of the universe, 
together with simple, noble, and comparatively pure morals, as 
were those of the Pythagoreans; and if we retrace our steps 
backwards towards later times, the more corrupt, absurd, and 
revolting become the religion, institutions, and social customs 
of all nations, until we reach the period just before the advent 
of the true Redeemer, when debasement had, we may say, 
reached its lowest depths. So true is it that the progress of 
mankind has ever been in a downward direction ; and more 
particularly in the ancient world. 



III. 

These few words must suffice for the Italic school. We 
come now to the Academy ; we mean the old Academy, not 
the caricature invented by Carneades, but the real foundation 
of Plato, the great disciple of Socrates. We have said that it 
is a second branch of traditionalist philosophy, and we must 
now explain fully our meaning. We are far from pretending 
that everything in Platonic doctrines was derived from tradi- 
tion, for that could not be said even of Pythagorism. Such a 
powerful mind as that of the founder of the Academy could 
not but have thoughts of its own ; and these thoughts were 
most brilliant and profound. Much that he wrote was the 



HELLENIC PHILOSOPHY. 



373 



genuine, unassisted offspring of his own intellect ; and there 
was in his character, as a writer, a striking originality. He 
united in his own person, more, perhaps, than any other author 
of ancient or modern times, a most dazzling imagination with 
the deepest reasoning faculty ; so that the reader scarcely knows 
which to admire the most, his biilliancy or his depth. Even 
in what he did not invent, he was truly original by making 
it his own. He had certainly received from others, as we shall 
see, the great idea of the unity of the Godhead. But he proved 
it as no one else had done before him ; chiefly from the innate 
sense of the beautiful. As one of his most recent biographers, 
unknown to us, has justly said : " With Plato the foundation 
of beauty is a reasonable order, addressed to the imagination 
through the senses — i. e., s mmetry in form, and harmony in 
sounds, the principles of which are as certain as the laws of 
logic, mathematics, and morals — all equally necessary products 
of eternal intellect, acting by the creation, and by the compre- 
hension of well-ordered forms, and well-harmonized forces, in 
rich and various play through the frame of the universe ; and 
the ultimate ground of this lofty and coherent doctrine of in- 
tellectual, moral, and resthetical harmonies lies with Plato, 
where alone it can lie, in the unity of a Supreme, reasonable, 
self-existent intelligence, whom we call God, the fountain of 
all force, and the Creator of all order in the universe ; the sum of 
whose most exalted attributas, and the substantial essence of 
whose perfec'ciin may, as contrasted with our finite and partial 
aspects of things, be expressed by the simple term To dyadbv — ■ 
the Good." 

We do not, therefore, call Plato a traditionalist philosopher, 
because of his being merely a copyist and collector of texts. 
He is indeed exactly the reverse. He seldom quotes his author- 
ities. He never says : " Such a man has said so and so, there- 
fore we ought to believe him." He acknowledges the infirm- 
ity of the human intellect, and asserts that many things must 



374 



GENTILISM. 



remain unknown oi' doubtful to us, until a teacher from heaven 
comes to take the spiritual guidance of mankind ; and this does 
not exhibit much reliance on previous testimony. Yet, he un- 
doubtedly consulted at all times what had been said or written 
before him ; and wherever he found truth he took it and made 
it his own by giving it a Platonic aspect, if we may use the ex- 
pression. He was far, therefore, from rejecting tradition ; but 
on the contrary, he collected the golden coin scattered by it 
here and there, and made it henceforth a treasure for mankind ; 
for those at least anxious to profit by it. But we must here 
enter somewhat more into detail as the subject is of some im- 
portance, and requires to be clearly understood. 

By comparing what St. Augustine and Diogenes Laertius 
say of the Platonic philosophy, we find that, essentially and on 
the whole, there was nothing completely original in it, and that 
its founder borrowed outlines and hints from others. The great 
Doctor of the West (De Civ. Dei., Lib. viii., cap. 4,) says that 
" Plato made three distinct parts of philosophy : the first, Ethics 
(moralem), whose object is to regulate human actions ; the sec- 
ond, Physics (naturalem), intent on the contemplation of the 
universe ; the third, Intellectual, by which the true is distin- 
guished from the false." Diogenes Laertius states positively in 
his " Life of Plato," that he " united in his philosophy the 
doctrines of Ileraclitus, Pythagoras, and Socrates. In Physics 
(rayap aladTjra), he followed Ileraclitus ; in the things of the 
Intellect (rd 6e vorjTa), Pythagoras ; in Ethics (rd 6e TcoXiTnta), 
Socrates." St. Augustine himself, a few sentences before the 
one we have quoted, says, what all men know, that he followed 
in morals the " discipline " of Socrates ; and that in Italy, where 
he travelled, "he had easily comprehended all the tenets o'i the 
Italic school, under the tuition of its most eminent teachers." 
And what is still more to our purpose, Apuleius (in Platonem), 
says expressly that, " although he had composed the body of 
his philosophy with members acknowledging a various origin " 



HELLENIC PHILOSOPHY. 



375 



— we translate literally this very pretentions author — " the 
natural part from Heraelitus, the intellectual from Pythagoras, 
and the moral from Socrates; yet he had made an homogeneous 
hody of the whole, as if he had given it birth himself." The 
reader will forgive the unseemly metaphor on account of the 
perfectly just idea it conveys. Did Plato, however, really adopt 
the physical theory of Heraelitus ? St. Augustine does not 
say a word of this cosmieal theorist, as having had anything to 
do in the formation of the system of the first Academy ; hut he 
alludes to Socrates and Pythagoras, as having had a great influ- 
ence in imparting to Plato their respective doctrine on ethics 
and metaphysics. It seems certain, it is true, that the founder 
of the Academy, when quite a young man, studied physical 
science under Cratylus, the disciple of Heraelitus, and even 
listened to the lesson of Hermogenes, a teacher of the atheistic 
tenets of Parmenides, who pretended that " creation is impos- 
sible," because it supposes previous non-existence, and non-ex- 
istence is simply inconceivable. But we know well that, for- 
tunately, young students do not admit all the vagaries of their 
teachers, and that when they happen to have done it, in after- 
life they modify often what they had heard, should they hap- 
pen to have any mind of their own. The imaginative Plato 
may have had all his life a great idea of fire or caloric, as a 
noble and active element ; but he did not certainly attribute to 
it all the marvels of creation without the intervention of God, 
which was the doctrine of Heraelitus. 

But we may well here set aside whatever Plato might have 
received from Heraelitus and Socrates, to speak only of the 
doctrines which the Pythagorean school handed down to him. 
For, as we saw, this school had collected many tenets held by 
more ancient sages, and which formed a great part of what we 
call here " old traditions." There was nothing of the kind in 
the physical teaching of Heraelitus, and scarcely anything prop- 
erly traditional in the moral discussions of Socrates, who 



376 



GEISTTILISM. 



always called the attention of his hearers to their own con- 
sciousness, as the principles of right or wrong are inscribed in 
the 'hearts of all. 

If there is anything certain in the life of Plato, it is his con- 
stant intercourse with the philosophers of the Italic school. 
In Sicily, where he sojourned three different times, he became 
acquainted at the court of Dionysius — both the elder and the 
; ounger — with the most celebrated Pythagoreans of his time. 
He made similar acquaintances in Italy, where he also resided 
for a time, although a few modern critics have doubted it 
against the testimony of all antiquity. 

He received from these various teachers the doctrine of 
transmigration, or metempsychosis, which he certainly up- 
holds ; that of numbers, to which he often alludes ; the general 
spiritualistic tendency of his teaching, in opposition to the 
thorough materialism and realism of the Sophists ; and, finally, 
no doubt, the striking affirmation so often repeated in his 
writings of the unity of the Godhead. Even, strange to say, 
his doctrine on " ideas," which seems to be so purely Platonic, 
is proved to be derived from the Pythagorean Epieharmus, as 
stated in the life of Plato by Diogenes Laertius ; so that there 
was really less originality and inventive genius in the mind of 
Plato than there seems to be at first sight. In reading the 
verses of the great Pythagorean poet, Epieharmus, preserved 
in the " Lives of the Philosophers," and placed by the author 
in juxtaposition with the very text of Plato, it looks occasion- 
ally like downright plagiarism ; and the modern reader is sur- 
prised to find that it was in a comic poet that the friend of 
Socrates found many links of his pet theory on " ideas." But 
it must be allowed that Epieharmus was a comic poet very dif- 
ferent from the subsequent Aristophanes, and even from Me- 
nander. It must have been something more than mere wit 
which Plato did not hesitate to place on a par with the high 
thoughts of Homer himself. 



HELLENIC PHILOSOPHY. 



377 



The importance of the matter, left almost entirely aside by 
all modem writers on the founder of the Academy, obliges us 
to insist yet longer on the intimate connection which existed 
at all times between this philosopher and the Pythagoreans of 
the same age. It is alluded to by Cicero as well as by St. Augus- 
tine. He writes (De ftnibus, v. 29) : " We all wish to live 
happy" — to know, consequently, the summumbonum — "we 
have, therefore, to see if we can find it in the doctrine of phi- 
losophers. They certainly promise it to us. If they did not, 
what motive acted upon Plato when he travelled through 
Egypt to receive from foreign priests the doctrine of num- 
bers and of things divine ? Why did he go later to Tarentum 
to see Archytas 1 Why to Locri to hear the Pythagoreans, 
Echecrates, Timceus, Acrion ? Was it not in order to consult 
Pythagoras, after Socrates % etc.'' St. J erome, likewise, is 
eloquent on the subject, and confirms admirably what was pre- 
viously said on the traditionalist character of the friend of 
Socrates : " Thus Plato" (Ad Paulinum, Epist. liii.) " per- 
formed a laborious pilgrimage to Egypt, and to Tarentum, and 
all along that shore of Italy called Magna Grceeia, in order 
that, being a master and full of influence at Athens, where the 
halls of the Academy resounded with his eloquence, he might 
become a pilgrim and a disciple ; and he preferred to learn 
modestly the doctrine of others rather than to teach imprudently 
his own. While thus engaged in the pursuit of philosophy 
through the whole globe, he was caught by pirates, sold to a 
cruel tyrant ; but though a captive, bound with chains, and 
obliged to work like a slave, he was, in fact, greater than the 
one who bought him, because he was a philosopher." 

Isaac Casanbou, in his notes on Diogenes Laertius, remarks 
also that Proclus (in Timmum) often shows the identity of the 
doctrine of Plato with that of Pythagoras ; and the details he 
gives are quite convincing. 

But we find in the very letters of Plato himself, and in other 



378 



GENTILISM. 



texts of ancient authors, interesting details still further con- 
firming our allegation. 

Of all the correspondence of Plato, only thirteen lettei's 
have heen preserved. Of these the first is from his friend 
Dion, and the genuineness of the two last has been contested, 
we do not see, indeed, for what reason. Their main object has 
reference only to the relations of the Athenian philosopher 
with Dionysins, the tyrant of Syracuse. Yet we may say that, 
in these few scraps of literary intercourse, there are abundant 
proofs of Pythagorean influence over the mind of the writer. 
Two of the letters are addressed to Archytas of Tarentum, and 
in the others, chiefly in the seventh, the longest and most im- 
portant, frequent mention is made of the Tarentine philoso- 
pher, one of the most celebrated characters of that period, 
and one of the most ardent friends of Plato. It is known that 
Archytas was not only a great mathematician, one of the most 
celebrated of antiquity, and a discoverer of several most inter- 
esting theorems, as well as of practical applications of, mathe- 
matics to art ; not only a statesman, as all Pythagoreans were, 
more or less, who raised to a high pitch the prosperity of his 
native city ; but that he was also a fervent adherent to the doc- 
trines of the Italic school ; the chief of it, in fact, in his time ; 
and thus he made Tarentum the headquarters of this noble 
sect of philosophers. He is seldom mentioned in the letters of 
Plato without some allusion to his friends, who formed a 
society with him, as all Pythagoreans did. 

Archytas was, in fact, the head of the Italic school at that 
epoch. He once saved the life of Plato, whom Dionysius had 
made up his mind to kill. And although the Athenian philoso- 
pher was not always on the best terms with many of his friends, 
and even quarrelled occasionally with those with whom he was 
the most intimate, as he did once with his bosom friend Dion, 
there is not a word intimating that throughout his intercourse 
with Archytas, there ever existed the least coldness or altera- 



HELLENIC PHILOSOPHY. 



379 



tion of friendship between them. If the whole correspondence 
of Plato had been preserved, we. should have, no doubt, more 
positive proofs on the subject. Yet there are, in one of the 
letters, some indications that, on both sides, inquiries were 
going on about earlier traditions, or, as the letter calls them, 
" some memorials." It is the twelfth, and as it is short, we 
give it entire on account of its importance : " Plato to Archy- 
tas of Tarentum — prosperity." " With what wonderful de- 
light did we receive the memorials which came from you, and 
admired ardently everything of the writer's. To us he appear- 
ed a man worthy of his celebrated ancestors. For they are 
said to have been ten thousand in number ; and they were, as 
the story handed down declaims, the best of all those Trojans, 
who during the reign of Laomedon removed themselves from 
their native land. 

" With respect to the memorials in my possession, about 
which you have sent to me, they are not yet in the shape I 
would wish them to be. Such as they are, however, I send 
them to you. As to the care to take of them, we are of ono 
mind, so that there is no need of exhortation." 

This is certainly obscure, but it becomes clear when we read 
the letter of Archytas to which this of Plato was an answer. 
It is given by Diogenes Laertius, and confirms everything we 
suspected : 

" It is well of you to have recovered from your sickness ; 
for this we have heard not only from your own letter, but also 
from the friends of Damiscus. We have not failed to fulfil 
your intentions with respect to the memorials : we went our- 
selves to the Lucanians, and found there the grand-children of 
Ocellus. We have in our possession the existing documents 
on his laws, on his manner of government, on the holiness of 
his time, and the whole genealogy of the Sept. We send you 
some of them ; if we can find more, you shall receive them." 

This is certainly a very important document ; and we have 



380 



GENTILISM. 



a right to wonder that no one, to our knowledge, has remarked 
it and commented upon it. Ocellus Lucanus was a celebrated 
Pythagorean author, of whom we possess yet a work on cos- 
mogony. Plato had evidently read it, and probably other 
books of the same writer which have perished. He inquired 
about it from his friend Archytas, who received from the pos- 
terity of Ocellus documents which concerned him personally 
as a chief of tribe, as a lawgiver, and a worshipper of the 
deity, for we cannot find any other meaning in the letter 
quoted above ; the word " holiness," baioT7]g, is to be remarked. 

We see the interest Plato took in these investigations. He 
made use of them certainly in the composition of his last 
works, the Republic, the Laws, the Timseus. It was not, there- 
fore, his original ideas he unfolded in these great compositions ; 
although he gave them a touch of his genius, and made them 
his own by the originality of his accessory thoughts, and the 
brilliancy of his imagination. We can imagine with what 
ardor the warm-hearted Plato threw himself into those anti- 
quarian researches, and what rich discoveries he made in those 
unexplored Pelasgic fields. For it was really Pelasgic lore 
that fell into his hands. He speaks himself of the times of 
Laomedon, anterior to Priam ; he speaks of a single tribe of 
the clan of Ocellus, to the number of ten thousand emigrating; 

" DO 

to a foreign land, probably to Lucania in Southern Italy ; he 
speaks of the holiness then prevailing, when Ocellus was giv- 
ing laws to the people of Magna Grsecia. Others gave laws 
at the same time and in the same country; the name of Zaleu- 
cus and Charondas are well known as legislators in Southern 
Italy ; that of Ocellus, who published these enactments spoken 
of here, has never come to us, except in this fragment, as a 
lawgiver. But it was chiefly holiness — baioYfjg — a word whose 
meaning includes both moral purity and the right worship of 
God, which was of a nature to attract the great mind of the 
friend of Socrates. 



HELLENIC PHILOSOPHY. 



381 



A short phrase of Laertius confirms this : " Some authors 
relate — and Satyrus is one of them — that he wrote to Dion, in 
Sicily, to buy for him from Philolaus, three books of Pytha- 
goras, at the price of a hundred miliar. " 

Plato was rich, although not excessively so, as few Greeks 
ever were ; and he shows in many passages of his writings, 
chiefly in his letters to Dionysius, that he took good care of 
his own, and did not like to be imposed upon by those from 
whom he purchased. Yet there was that greedy Philolaus, 
who possessed three short works of Pythagoras himself, and 
wanted a price, which in our days would be called over-ex- 
travagant — nearly five hundred pounds sterling. There was 
evidently a long negotiation going on on the subject, ending 
by Plato giving in, and consenting to the exorbitant price de- 
manded by the owner. The fact is certain ; for not only 
Laertius gives these short details, but Aulu Gellius relates the 
same fact from other authorities, and gives a slightly altered 
price ; he makes it " ten thousand denarii." 

Plato, surely, intended to make use of these books and docu- 
ments, which he bought at so dear a price, and at such an 
evident inconvenience of his friends ; and the use he would 
make of them, would be to read them, collect extracts from 
them, and shape his thoughts in conformity with those ex- 
tracts. 

But in addition to Plato and the Pythagoreans, there were a 
host of sages and writers who evidently did not propagate their 
own individual thoughts, but formed a large school to whose 
charge seemed to be entrusted the deposit of old truths com- 
municated ages before to mankind at large. Thus, the asser- 
tion we made is abundantly proved, that, in spite of the com- 
plete disintegration of pure dogmas by a totally corrupt and 
individualized polytheism, truth itself had not perished, but 
remained scattered in the teachings of many men belonging to 
the Italic school and the Academy. 



382 



GENTILISM. 



Had they not, besides, " sacred accounts of the olden times," 
different from both schools, yet containing holy doctrines for- 
gotten by the majority of their contemporaries, but which 
they cherished and tried to preserve and propagate ? In the 
seventh letter of Plato we find the following : " In things 
inanimate, there is nothing either good or evil worthy of 
mention ; but good or ill will happen to each soul, either 
existing with the body or separated from it. It is on this ac- 
count most important to trust powerfully (ovrug) to the sacred 
accounts of the olden times, which inform us that the soul is 
immortal, and has judges of its conduct, and suffers the 
greatest punishments after it is liberated from the body. 
Hence every one must be persuaded that it is a lesser evil to 
suffer from, than to do, the greatest' sins and injuries. This, 
indeed, the man who is fond of money and poor in soul does 
not hear ; and shoidd he hear, he laughs it down, thinking it 
wise to take his fill, like a wild beast, of food and drink, or 
to delight in servile and disgraceful carnal pleasures. Being 
blind, he is not able to see that evil, ever united to each act of 
wrong, follows him in his insatiate cravings for what is un- 
holy, and that he has to drag along with himself the long 
chain of his wrong-doings, both while he is moving along upon 
earth, and when he shall take, under the earth " (we would 
say to hell), " an endless journey of dishonor and frightful 
miseries." 

This was the style suggested by these " sacred accounts of 
the olden time," and we doubt if a Christian orator could 
express himself in fitter terms and more glowing language. 
We are, indeed, surprised to find it under the pen of a writer 
who lived in the midst of the moral rottenness of the brilliant 
age of Pericles ; but to understand it without difficulty, we 



HELLENIC PHILOSOPHY. 



383 



have merely to remember that it was an echo, yet vibrating, 
of a divine voice, uttered many ages before. 

There is occasionally in the Athenian philosopher a Chris- 
tian sense which is inexplicable, except on the above hypo- 
thesis. For it is not only in the letter above quoted that we 
find it so strangely and powerfully expressed. In the " Re- 
public," for example (Chap, v.), where is discussed the ques- 
tion, Which is the happier life, that of the just man persecuted 
as a criminal, or of the unjust man honored, and apparently 
successful in all his undertakings? " There will be no difficulty," 
said Grlaucon, in ascertaining what life will be the lot of either. 
" It shall be told, then ; and even if it should be told with more 
than unusual bluntness, think not that it is I who tell it, Soc- 
rates, but those who prefer injustice to justice. These, then, 
will say, that the just man thus situated" (considered as a crim- 
inal), " will be scourged, tortured, fettered, have his eyes burnt 
out, and, lastly, suffering all manner of evil, will be crucified ; 
and he will know, too, that, in the common opinion, a man 

should desire not to be, but to appear, just The other, 

on the contrary, holds the magistracy in the State, .... marries 
into whatever family he pleases, .... forms agreements, and 
joins in partnership with whom he likes, succeeds in all his 
projects for gain, because he scruples not to commit injustice ; 
.... and to the gods, as respects sacrifices and offerings, he not 
only sufficiently, but magnificently, both sacrifices, and makes 
offerings, serving far better than the just man, the gods them- 
selves, of whom, consequently, he ought to be a greater favor- 
ite." These are the reasons of those who prefer injustice to jus- 
tice. And after discussing the question at length, Plato states 
(Chap, ix.) that " a man must be able to show what has been 
asserted so far as true, to be false, and fully know and ac- 
knowledge that justice is best,' 1 '' even in the extreme case pre- 
viously supposed. 

It is known that some Greek Fathers of the Church have 
26 



384 



GENTILISM. 



concluded, from the description of the just man under perse- 
cution, that Plato had read the prophecies of Isaiah and the 
other Hebrew seers. We do not think that it can be justly 
inferred ; but there is certainly in the passage a perfume of 
pure and perfect morality, so akin to the Christian feeling, 
that it is hard to understand how Plato or Socrates himself 
could have drawn it from his own understanding, so that it 
seems very likely that they had derived it from those " sacred 
accounts of olden time" mentioned above. 

In the same category may be placed the following quotation 
of Ilesiod, and the short comment on it given by our author 
(Chap, vii.) : 

" How vice at once and easily we choose ! 
The way so smooth ; its dwelling, too, so nigh ! 
Toil before virtue " 

— " and a certain road," adds Plato, " both long and steep ! " 
He alludes evidently to some ancient writer beside H^siod ; 
and we know how the same thought is expressed in the Gospel 
in nearly the same words : " How narrow and hard is the 
road " 

But what is more wonderful still, is that the most arduous 
of all Christian precepts, and certainly the most unintelligible 
to the mere reason of man — the forgiveness of injury — is so 
clearly stated in the " Crito," that the first reading of it is 
simply startling to any one accustomed to pagan ethics, so as 
to induce him to read, again and again, the passage, to find out 
if he had not mistaken the meaning. 

" Socrates. Is injustice, on every account, both evil and dis- 
graceful to him who commits it ? Do we admit this or not ? 

" Crito. We do admit it. 

" Socr. On no account, therefore, ought we to act unjustly. 
" Cri. Surely not. 

" Socr. Neither ought one who is injured to return the injury, 



HELLENIC PHILOSOPHY. 



335 



as the multitude thinks, since it is on no account right to act 
unjustly. 

" Gri. It appears not. 

" Socr. What, then ? Is it right to clo evil, Crito, or not ? 
" Gri. Surely it is not right, Socrates. 

" Socr. But what ? To do evil in return when one has been 
evil-entreated, is that right or not ? 
" Gri. By no means. 

" Socr. For to do evil to men differs in no respect from com- 
mitting injustice. 

" Gri. You say truly. 

" Socr. It is not right, therefore, to return an injury, or to do 
evil to any man, however one may have suffered from him. 
But take care, Crito, that in allowing these things, you do not 
allow them contrary to your own opinion. For I know, that to 
some few only those things appear to he true. These men, 
consequently, and they to whom they do not seem true, have no 
sentiment in common, and must needs despise each other, while 
they look to each other's opinions. Consider well, then, whether 
you coincide and think with me ; and whether we can begin 
our considerations from this point, that it is never right, either 
to do an injury, or to return an injury, or when one has been 
evil-entreated to revenge oneself by doing evil in return, or clo 
you dissent from and not coincide in this principle ? It has 
been my conviction for a long time, and it is still so now ; but 
if you, in any respect, think otherwise, say so, and inform me. 
Should you persist in your former opinion, which is mine, hear 
what follows. 

" Gri. I*do persist in it, and think with you. Speak on, 
then. 

We ought not thus to be surprised, if such was the doctrine 
not only of Socrates, but of Plato his disciple, to hear him as- 
sert that a man who knows he is to be ' judged after his death,' 
ought to reflect often on the morality of his actions, in order 



386 



GENTILISM. 



to prevent the future judgment by that of his own conscience ; 
teaching thus clearly the practice of the daily exarnen', so well 
known to Christians. The real text, and the very passage 
where it is to he found, escapes us for the moment, but it is 
certainly expressed as clearly as we assert. 

Should any reader .require more convincing proofs of the 
spirit of traditional inquiry in some, at least, of the philosophi- 
cal sects of Greece, he will find a large number of them in the 
fourteenth chapter of the fifth book of the Stromata of St. 
Clement, whicli has for its heading : " The Greek Plagiarisms 
from the Hebrews." He Will find there that Thales, being 
asked, " If a man could elude the knowledge of the Divine 
Being while doing aught?" He answered :"" How could he, 
who cannot do so while thinking ?" And " the Socratic An- 
ti -thrill'-, paraphrasing that prophetic utterance, 'To whom 
have ye likened me V says that ' God is like to no one; where- 
fore no one can come to the knowledge of Him from an 
image.' " 

St. Clement may, in this long chapter, have attributed too 
uncritically a knowledge of the Bible to Greek philosophers ; 
but many of their utterances are so repugnant to the general 
opinions of their time, and in many cases t'o their own ordinary 
ideas, that we cannot indeed explain many of them, except on 
the supposition that they came from an older and holier source, 
whose stream in its wanderings had at last reached them. 

VI. 

But this very fact of St. Clement of Alexandria attributing 
to the Hebrew traditions, as a source, many of the thoughts 
and maxims of Hellenic philosophers, seems to be clashing with 
our general assertion referring them to an original primitive 
revelation. Yet, both derivations, instead of contradicting, 



HELLENIC PHILOSOPHY. 



387 



really confirm each other. In comparing together the primi- 
tive belief of Hinclostan, Egypt, and Greece, and finding so 
many points of agreement, we conclude that the traditions of 
these three races came from a time previous to their separation, 
an epoch, now sufficiently well ascertained, possibly long be- 
fore the Mosaic dispensation, at least before the period when 
it became capable of influencing other nations ; and that the 
truths common to those great races came from the very origin 
of mankind, and must be referred, altogether, to the patriarchal 
epoch. But nothing could be farther from our thoughts than 
to deny the subsequent moral and religious influence of the 
Hebrew books and traditions on the Gentile nations of anti- 
quity. In order that the Jewish people and religion should 
have such an influence, God placed it in the centre of the 
world, and willed that its life should ebb and flow in the very 
eddies of pagan fife, so that Assyria, Chaldsea, Persia, Egypt, 
Greece, and Rome should know practically the great, consist- 
ent, and ever-accessible monotheistic people of antiquhvv, as an 
auxiliary means of preserving truth. 

But the Mosaic revelation, instead of being antagonistic to 
the patriarchal teaching, was only a development of it, and 
a more definite preparation for the Redeemer. One 
thing is sure, however, that whatever came to Greece from 
Hindostan could not have passed through Judea, as there is 
not the least proof, or probability even, of communication be- 
tween both countries ; and the Hindoo myths must have been 
derived from a higher antiquity. On the other hand, what- 
ever is found in Hellenic philosophers as evidently taken from 
the Bible and later Hebrew traditions, could not have come 
from India ; since the Pelasgians and Hellenes, after their prim- 
itive migration, never kept any intercourse whatever with 
their Ai-yan ancestors. And it is proper that at the end of this 
chapter a word should be said of this last kind of plagiarism, 
as St. Clement calls it. 



388 



GEJSTTILISM. 



(a). First, it is well known that he was not the only 
Father of the Church who helieved in that intercourse of Gen- 
tile nations with the Hebrews, so that they — the nations — had 
received many great religious truths and historical traditions 
from them. Most of the Greek Fathers were of the same opin- 
ion. Eusebius of Cassarea, in particular, enumerates in his 
" Propaideia, or Prseparatio angelica," an immense number of 
instances, some of which are certainly very striking, more so, ac- 
cording to our thinking, than most of those quoted by Clement 
of Alexandria. Natalis Alexander, in his " Historia Eccles. Vet. 
Test." (Dissertatio X., Prop, ii.), remarks With justice that the 
reflections of Eusebius, in his Eleventh Book, Chap, xxvii., etc., 
are in truth forcible and even convincing; and that any one 
who reads those chapters with attention, cannot but believe 
that much of what the " divine " Plato has said on the immor- 
tality of the soul, on creation, on the end of the world, on the 
resurrection of the dead — of which he gives an example such as 
we read in .our Lives of the Saints — and lastly on " judgment," 
must have been in the main taken from our Holy Scripture. 

(5.) In the second place, there can be no doubt that many 
pagan myths were mere allegories containing Biblical facts, or 
at least alluding to them and supposing them. 

Father Guerin Durocher, in his " Histoire veritable des 
Temps Fabuleux," comments at length on many of them. If, 
too often, his conclusions may be called rather fanciful, it is cer- 
tain that in many points he convinces his readers of the truth 
of his explanations. 

(c). More singular still, the thinkers of our age begin to come 
back again to those exegetist interpretations which appeared to 
have been abandoned for ever ; and Mr. Gladstone, in Chap, 
vii. of his " Juventus Mundi," not only refers to them with 
approval, even as high up in time as Homer himself, but tries 
to explain the process as it took place in antiquity, which no 
previous author, to our knowledge, had done. 



HELLENIC PHILOSOPHY. 



389 



Zeus — he justly remarks — in his Olympian personality, is, 
with respect to morality, far below Apollo and Athene, but " as 
the traditional representative of providence and the Theistic 
idea," he is far above them. Thus, the twoiold character of 
Zeus in Greek mythology is accepted by Mr. Gladstone, as it 
seems to be by the generality of writers in our age ; and as 
Olympian, son of Kronos, he does not correspond to the ideal 
of God in the Bible anything near so precisely as Apollo and 
Athene do. The following are his words : '"Many elements of 
the Hebrew traditions recorded in the Holy Scriptures, or 
otherwise preserved among the Jews down to later times, ap- 
pear in the Olympian court of Homer. But tbey are not found 
in all the personages that compose the assemblage ; nor even in 
all those deities whom, from various kinds of evidence in the 
Poems, we perceive to have been fully recognized as objects 
of national worship. Further, in the characters where the 
features corresponding with Hebrew traditions mainly appear, 
there is a peculiar elevation of tone, and a remarkable degree 
of reverence is maintained towards them, so as to separate 
them, not indeed by an uniform, but commonly by a percepti- 
ble and broad line, from the remainder of the gods. 

" Besides the idea of a Deity which in some sense is three 
in one, the traditions traceable in Homer, which appear to be 
drawn from the same source as those of Holy Scripture, are 
chiefly these : — (1.) A Deliverer, conceived under the double 
form, first of the ' seed of a woman ' — a Being at once Divine 
and human;" — Mr. Gladstone understands this of Apollo; 
" secondly, of the Logos, the "Word or Wisdom of God," 
meaning no doubt Athene. (2.) " Next, the woman whose 
seed this Redeemer was to be " — Leto. (3.) " Next, the rain- 
bow considered as a means, or a sign, of communication be- 
tween God and man — Iris. And, finally, the traditions of an 
Evil Being, together with his ministers working under the 
double form of .... ' open war,' and of ' wiles ;' as a rebel, 



390 



GENTILISM. 



and as a tempter. This last tradition is indeed shivered into 
fragments, such as the giants precipitated into Tartarus, and as 
Ate roaming on the earth The other four traditions ap- 
pear to he represented in the persons of Apollo, Athene, Leto, 
and Iris If , in the progress of time, and with the muta- 
tions which that system gradually underwent, the marks of the 
correspondence with the Hebrew records became more faint, 
the fact even raises some presumption that, were we enabled to 
go yet further back, we should obtain yet fuller and clearer 
evidence of their identity of origin in certain respects." 

A few pages back tbe same author had already made the 
same assertion, perhaps even in stronger terms, and had tried 
to explain the process of transmission from the " Hebrew rec- 
ords," as he calls them, to the Hellenic primitive mythology. 

" The features " he had mentioned, " in the case of the two 
first-named deities particularly " — Apollo and Athene — " im- 
part to the pictures of them an extraordinary elevation and 
force, such as to distinguish them broadly from the delineations 
of other gods, in whom these particular features are wanting. 
The features themselves are in the most marked correspond- 
ence with the Hebraic traditions, as conveyed in the books of 
Holy Scripture, and also as handed down in the auxiliary 
sacred learning of the Jews. But while it seems impossible to 
deny the correspondence without doing violence to facts, on 
the other hand we are not able to point out historically the 
channel of communication through which these traditions were 
conveyed into Greece, and became operative in the formation 
of the Olympian scheme." 

Tet Mr. Gladstone attempts it, and although with much dif- 
fidence he supposes " that the Phoenician navigators offered the 
natural and probable explanation of any such phenomena. Be- 
cause, on the one hand, we know, from the historic books of 
Scripture, that the Phoenicians were at an early date in habits 
of intercourse with the Jews; while on the other hand, they 



HELLENIC PHILOSOPHY. 



891 



not only were in like habits with the Achaians of Homer, but 
also, as far as we can discern, no other nation had a sensible 
amount of intercourse with Greece, or if there were such, it 
passed under the Phoenician name." 

And the writer endeavors to give greater force to his ideas 
by bringing forward the myth of Bellerophon, which he tries 
to prove to have been originally Phoenician, and which, in his 
opinion, is a. legend of Joseph, since he says, " there is a strik- 
ing similarity between Bellerophon, solicited by the wife of 
Proitos, and Joseph, by the wife of Potiphar." 

Whatever strength may be granted to this last supposition — 
and, in our opinion, there is very little probability in it, since 
the two stories of Joseph and Bellerophon are completely at 
variance with each other in all the other details — yet the hypo- 
theses of Mr. Gladstone respecting Apollo, Athene, Leto, and 
Iris, chiefly on the two first, are at once new and startling. 
His subject confined his researches to the poems of Homer, and 
the very idea of finding in the Iliad and Odyssey, analogies 
with the Bible, appears at first sight almost a fantastic one. 
Yet, if the author has not carried his theory to a real demon- 
stration, he has at least presented it with so much plausibility 
as to make it probable and serious ; a result which would not 
be so successfully attained, if in our day the theory were ap- 
plied to long-subsequent Hellenic authors. The little we have 
said may be considered as strictly sufficient ; yet we have availed 
ourselves only of the' labor of ancient' authors, and we could 
not treat the subject in extenso. The learned Huet, Bishop of 
Avranches, is, we think, the last who did it, at least in an ex- 
haustively erudite manner for his time, in his " Demonstration 
Evangelique." But, since Huet, many discoveries have been 
made in the field of philosophy, with respect to classical Greek 
and Latin writers, as well as to Christian authors of the first 
centuries. The same subject treated exhaustively in our days, 
with the help furnished by the German, French, and English 



392 



GENTILISM. 



editors of classics, and by the numerous additions made to the 
authentic works of the Fathers of the Church, and of profane 
writers of antiquity, by such men as Angelo Mai, would surely 
bring the argument so near to a demonstration, that all would 
be obliged to admit that, either from the remnants of primi- 
tive revelation, or from intercourse with the Jews and the 
knowledge of Holy Scripture, the Gentiles of Greece and Italy 
were acquainted with many primitive truths which polytheism 
was not able wholly to obliterate. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE GREEK AND LATIN POETS AS GUARDIANS OF TRUTH. 
I. 

Hellemc traditional philosophy counteracted to a great ex- 
tent the evil consequences of an unbridled rationalism, which 
in Greece threatened, from the first, to make atheism and ma- 
terialism everywhere prevalent. Either the primitive traditions 
on the unity of God, on the immortality of the human soul, 
on the eternity of rewards or punishments after death, on the 
sinfulness of man, and the necessity of expiation, etc., etc. ; or 
the same truths and many others contained in the " Hebrew 
records," as Mr. Gladstone has it, became the heirloom 'of 
Europe, as they had been previously of Hindostan, Bactriana, 
and Egypt ; and this chiefly through Pythagorism and Platon- 
ism. Thus, s6mething at least of the primitive universality or 
Catholicism, as we expressed it, of the patriarchal religion, 
continued to subsist in the western part of the old world, as 
it did formerly in the central or eastern part of it. Yet — and 
Mr. Gladstone remarks it — the primitive brightness of the 
truth gradually grew dimmer, and error became more and more 
prevalent ; so that, according to him — -and we agree with him 
perfectly on the subject — the higher up our researches extend 
in antiquity, the more pure do we find the belief of mankind, 
and the more resembling our own. " If in the progress of 
time, and with the mutations which that (the Homeric) system 
underwent, the marks of the correspondence with the Hebrew 
records became more faint, the fact even raises some presump- 

(393) 



394 



GENTILISM. 



tion that, were we enabled to go yet further back (than Homer), 
we should obtain yet fuller and clearer evidence of their iden- 
tity of origin in certain respects." (p. 211.) 

This chapter ' in its entirety will be devoted to showing 
how that the poets, who were, in the main, guilty of introduc- 
ing idolatry in Europe, were nevertheless the true preservers of 
the greatest number of old traditions handed clown to the very 
times of our Lord. For Poetry is truly a divine gift, and can- 
not exist without a kind of inspiration, as Plato proves in one 
of his dialogues, and with justice did Raphael, in representing 
her on the walls of the Vatican, give ber wings, which he re- 
fused to Philosophy. We have no doubt that, if Plato, who 
was constantly looking into tbe surviving fragments of old 
philosophers and lawgivers, had condescended to do the same 
for the bards of " olden time," and of his own age, he would 
not have been so severe in excluding the poets from his city, 
conducting them, it is true, with respect to the limits of its 
territory, and there sending them on their way, crowned with 
ehaplets of flowers, and loaded with expressions of the highest 
regard. He might have permitted them to remain ; but with 
the injunction of cultivating ancient lore, and refraining from 
inventing false tales. 

Of Orpheus and his numerous school, enough has been said. 
But tbe tragic dramatists alone could furnish us with a long 
list of passages strikingly illustrating our thesis. "We will se- 
lect a few of these. The most remarkable of them is, un- 
doubtedly, the strange poem of " Prometheus bound." Many 
interpretations of it have been given. Which is the surest ? 
2To one can say. The old mythologists themselves did not 
agree ; and the modern critics content themselves with an ab- 
stract of the various old myths supposed to be contained in it, 
to which they append their comments, often as fanciful as 
the legends themselves, if not more so. Baron von Humboldt 
saw in it merely a record of Phoenician colonization. Others 



GREEK AND LATIN POETS. 



395 



saw in it the embodiment of the first struggles between the 
primitive Pelasgic pantheism and the more recent Olympian 
system of idolatry represented by Zeus. We have already ob- 
served that it might represent the constant and cruel hardships 
of the long migrations of Pelasgians or Hellenes from India 
to Greece, and, especially, when they reached the almost im- 
passable heights of the Caucasus. But the poem of JEschylns 
contains many details which cannot be possibly explained by such 
realistic and common-place interpretations. The great tragic 
Avriter relates several incidents as no other traditional narration 
has reported them. Yet his version of it is full of in- 
consistencies. It is evident that he had some ancient docu- 
ments, perhaps the most ancient of all, and he has inserted 
them in his poem almost at random ; without failing, however, 
to infuse into them a plentiful admixture of his own thoughts. 
But in many of them there is intrinsic evidence that he could 
not have invented them, but must have taken them from some 
ancient source. Being a pagan Greek, he could not understand 
the myth ; and in order to give an exuberant life to his poem, he 
has inserted in it the notions polytheism gave him of Zeus, 
Hephaistos, Hermes, etc. ; and the grand figure of Prometheus 
has suffered from it. The consecraence is, that it is impossible 
to make a consistent tale of the whole poem, and we have to 
endeavor to find in it what is really ancient, and could not have 
issued at all from the imagination of the poet. In the course of 
such an investigation we shall fall on the most extraordinary 
and sublime traditions, far superior to any of those preserved 
by Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Plato. We must, however, start 
from the supposition that Christianity is true ; and that the 
fall and the then future redemption of man, in spite of the 
opposition of Satan, are two great facts kept in the remem- 
brance of all ancient nations. Yoltaire himself has acknowl- 
edged it. 



396 



GENTILISM. 



II. 

A very erudite and clever writer of three most interesting 
articles on the " Prometheus bound," in the " Annales de Philo- 
sophic Chretienne" — Mr. C. Rossignol — places ^Eschylus first 
of the three great Greek dramatists, because he is " more true to 
the old traditions, more severe in his style, larger in his mind 
and views, and far more majestic in all his conceptions " than 
Sophocles, and still more than Euripides, whom the critic " wil- 
lingly gives up to the wrath of Aristophanes and of Plato." 
"William Schlegel says, that " the other fictions of Greek tragic 
writers are merely shreds of tragedy, but the Prometheus 
bound of JEschyles is Tragedy itself in all its primitive and 
glorious splendor." 

All modern critics admit that iEschylus, in this poem, did 
not give merely the invention of his own fancy, but embodied 
in them old traditions handed down to him, and preserved in 
his time by many authors. 

But the question is, What were those traditions % And what 
was the true character of Prometheus, according to them ? Mr. C. 
Rossignol, in his second article, states that " several passages of 
the poem " — he quotes only one, and that not by any means 
the most striking — " have filled with stupor some men of intel- 
lect by reminding them of Christ, who suffered for the redemp- 
tion of man." He does not name them, and we were before 
totally ignorant of the fact that such an interpretation had been 
given ■ to this tragedy. This hypothesis he altogether rejects, 
because Prometheus often displays in the poem " a deep pride 
and a concentrated rage" utterly opposed to the character of the 
Redeemer. He then adduces several passages which display 
the contrast existing between Prometheus and Christ. In his 
opinion the bound " Titan " is Adam after his fall, and he 
brings forward a considerable body of proof in support of. it. 



GREEK AND LATEST POETS. 



397 



We think, however, that Mr. Possignol has not rendered suf- 
ficient justice to the opinion he condemns, and that a number 
of remarkable passages can be quoted from the poem to sub- 
stantiate it ; so that after all ^Eschylus may have jumbled to- 
gether several traditions in his possession ; and, being a pagan 
and not understanding them, he may have unknowingly given 
to the character of Prometheus, features altogether inconsistent 
and antagonistic. We are glad to find that the writer in the 
" Annales de Philosophie " admits fully the double character 
of Zeus as existing in the poem of ^Esehylus — Zeus the Su- 
preme, pater Deorum hominumque, and Zeus, the son of Kro- 
nos, the Olympian husband of Juno. This naturally creates 
some confusion in the myth, and the distinction ought to be 
carefully kept in view. We say, then, that the Olympian god 
whom Prometheus opposed in heaven is Satan himself, the 
enemy of the human race. And on this supposition, based on 
the drama itself, we proceed. 

First, in two remarkable passages of the poem, Prometheus 
is stated to know all future things, and to have been aware of 
the consequences of his opposition to Zeus, when he took pity 
on the misfortunes of mankind. This has escaped the notice 
of many commentators ; and Mr. Rossignol himself seems to 
think that the "hero" was ignorant of his fate, and conse- 
quently cannot be the One we love to call the Redeemer. 

The first passage is taken from verses 101 k. t. A, and reads 
thus : 

irdvTd Trpov&niOTafiai 
CKedpCjq ra [leXXovr', ovde fiot iroraivov 
» irrjjj,' ovdev r\fyi. 

The literal Latin translation is : 

" omnia prsenovi 
accurate quce futura sunt, neque mihi inopinata 
ulla calatiritus adveniet." 



398 



GENTILISM. 



The literal English translation given by T. A. Buckley is : 
" I know beforehand all futurity exactly, and no suffering will 
(have) come upon me unlooked for." These are the very words 
of Prometheus himself. There are here two very distinct pro- 
positions ; the first asserts his general foreknowledge which 
embraces everything, which he must have possessed in heaven, 
as well as on the rock on which he was bound ; the second 
refers to the evils yet in store for him. And, as in the same 
passage, a few hues before, he calls himself a God, he is cer- 
tainly, in the opinion of JSschylus, far above the Olympian 
gods, above the son of Kronos himself, whose foreknowledge 
is so limited that he does not know his future fall, announced 
everywhere in the poem. Satan, likewise, did not know that 
Christ was the Son of God, and that he would put an end to 
his power. Hence the temptation related in the gospel. 

The other passage is taken from the verses 265, k. t. X. 

iyu) tit ravd' anavr' i]TTiaTdjirjv 
ekojv eiiobv ijnapTov, ovk dpv^aofiai, 
dvrjToiq d'dpfjyoyv avrbq evpojMrjv novovq. 

The literal Latin reads : 

*' ego vero hsec omnia non ignorabam. 
volens, volens deliqui, non infitiabor ; 
mortalibus opitulando ipse a;rumnas nactus sum." 

And the literal English : " But I knew all these things ; wil- 
lingly, willingly I erred, I will not gainsay it ; and in doing 
service to mortals I brought sufferings upon myself." 

The majority of commentators assign to the word* -rjpaprov, an 
interpretation completely wrong. They make Prometheus con- 
fess here that he had sinned in opposing Zeus ; and in refusing 
to repent of his sin and become reconciled with the god, he 
shows only obstinacy and rage. The nymphs of the chorus had 
already, a few lines back, used the word rmaprec;, and the same 



GREEK AND LATIN POETS. 



399 



commentators understood it of sin likewise, and pretend that 
the friends of the suffering hero exhort him to repent. But 
the verb dfiaprdvo) has generally quite another meaning be- 
side sinning. The first and most obvious one is, to make a mis- 
take, to be wrong in judgment, to err in consequence of it, and 
here it is obviously the meaning of the poet. The nymphs of 
the chorus had used the word ^apreg, " thou hast been wrong 
or foolish," as we say colloquially ; and Prometheus applies the 
same word to himself because it had been used by the nymphs, 
his friends : " Yes," he says, " I have been foolish enough for 
my own interest to oppose Zeus ; but I did it willingly, 
although I knew that my pity for mankind would bring these 
sufferings on me." 

It is true that, directly after, Prometheus adds, " Yet, not at 
all did I imagine that, in such a punishment as this, I was to 
wither away upon lofty rocks, and to find myself bound to this 
desolate, solitary crag." This is not certainly in accordance with 
the previous assertion that " all futurity " was open to the eye of 
the God. JEschylus thought, probably, that to make any god so 
precise in his foreknowledge, as that such inferior details as a 
" solitary crag " should be unveiled to him would be unworthy 
of Deity. He had not found this certainly in the traditions he 
possessed, and he merely contradicts what he had previously 
asserted. 

The next passage we shall quote, commences from the 235th 
line. We will not give it in Greek, as its meaning is not, as far 
as we know, disputed. It reads : " These schemes " of Zeus, 
" no one opposed except myself. But I dared : I ransomed mor- 
tals from being utterly destroyed, and going down to Hades," 
namely, to hell. The two previous passages are in these few 
phrases explained thoroughly, so that no critic can put their 
true meaning in doubt. They are the words of the Redeemer. 

Another argument in support of the opinion of those who 

see in Prometheus an image or type of the Saviour, is derived 
27 



400 



GENTILISM. 



from the character of Io in the poem. Mr. Rossignol himself 
sees in her the plain features of Eve after her sin, and it is 
proper to refer to his ideas on the subject in order to under- 
stand the character and office of the hero of the drama. Mr. 
A. Nicholas, also, in his "Etudes Philosophiques sur le Chris- 
tianisme," sees in Io the first mother of mankind ; as, in Pro- 
metheus, he acknowledges Adam or the human race. 

" Io," says Mr. Rossignol, " bears all the characteristics of the 
unfortunate Eve ; like her prototype, she is under a curse, 
miserable, a wanderer, followed by the heavenly wrath from 
country to country ; the earth is bathed by her tears, and re- 
echoes to her groans. But the picture is yet more true when it 
embraces the fate of all women before the coming of the Mes- 
siah. They are happy and respected nowhere ; their dignity i3 
misunderstood, outraged . . . ." Mr. Nicholas speaks almost in 
the same terms. 

But what does Io herself, in the poem, expect from Prome- 
theus ? what does she see in him ? what does she think of him ? 
xlad the hero been merely Adam — although we do not deny 
that the poem bears also this interpretation in many passages 
— how different would have been the meeting of the two for- 
lorn sufferers ! 

"To ... . Clearly define to me what remedy there is for my 
disease ; speak, if at all thou knowest ; speak, and tell it to the 
wretched roaming damsel. 

" Prom. I will tell thee clearly everything which thou de- 
sirest to learn .... in plain language, as it is right to open the 
hps to friends. Thou seest him who bestowed fire on mortals, 
Prometheus. 

" Io. O, thou that didst confer such a benefit on mankind, 
wretched Prometheus, tell me for what offence thou art under- 
going such a terrible penance ? 

" Prom. I have just ceased lamenting my own pangs. 

" Io. Say who it was that bound thee fast in this cleft ? 



GREEK AND LATIN POETS. 



401 



" Prom. The decree of Zeus, but the hand of Hephaistos. 
" Jo. And for what offences art thou paying the penalty % 
" Prom. Thus much alone is all that I can clearly explain to 
thee." 

Was the document on which ^Eschylus based his tragedy 
reticent on the answer to such an important question ? Or, 
having the answer plain before his eyes, and being unable to 
understand its import, did he fall back, as was usual among 
Egyptians and Greeks, on the necessity of keeping secret the 
mysteries ? We are inclined to accept this last interpretation. 
Thus ^Eschylus did not dare to write : " For thy offences I am 
paying the penalty ! " 

III. 

But we must not suppose that the other tragedies of the 
great Eleusinian poet contain nothing of a similar import. 
Among those which have survived the injuries of time, there is 
only one entire " trilogy," embracing the Agamemnon, the 
Coephori, and the Eumenides. It is the story of Orestes, 
from the original cause of his matricide, to his expiation. In 
the opinion of many modern critics, it is the greatest tragic 
composition in existence ; and as it is complete, it can give us, 
they say, a more exact idea of the Greek stage than any other 
poem we possess. Our subject, however, is not concerned 
,with its artistic merits. It is the echoes of tradition we must 
endeavor to detect in it. It is, in fact, another exposition of 
moral truth, such as is contained in the book of Job and in the 
prophecies of Ezechiel. And as, confessedly, the Hebrew 
poems of both inspired writers are among the grandest con- 
ceptions of the Old Testament, it is not a little striking to find 
some resemblance to them in a Greek writer only a little older 
than Pericles. ^Esehylus, in fact, lived to see the great man 
who gave his name to the golden age of Greek literature. But 



402 



GENTILISM. 



he sternly opposed his innovations in religion, polities, and 
even art. In the words of Mr. E. H. Plumptre : " Pie found 
on his return (from Sicily) new men, new measures, a new 

philosophy, a new taste in poetry Men who could claim 

no connection with Eupatrid descent were pressing forward to 
the foremost place of power. The institutions which were 
held most sacred as the safeguard of- Athenian religion were 
criticised and attacked. The court of Areiopagos, which had 
exercised an awful and undefined authority in all matters con- 
nected, directly or indirectly, with the religious life of the 
State, was covertly attacked under the plea of reforming its ad- 
ministration. Oracles and divinations no longer commanded 
men's reverence and trust. There were whispers that nien 
were beginning to say that there was no God ; or that the old 
name of Zeus was to pass away before those of a Supreme 
Intelligence, or a measureless vortex. And the leader of the 
movement, in all its bearings upon religion, politics, art, 
and thought, was one who inherited the curse of the Alcmse- 
onidse, against whom the aristocratic party had revived the 
memory of that curse, who had been suspected himself of 
sacrilege and scepticism on account of his connection with 
Anaxagoras " (namely, Pericles). 

These were the feelings which prompted ^Eschylus to write 
his celebrated trilogy. In it, consequently, we have his in- 
most thoughts on all those great subjects ; and as he wrote it 
only three years before his death, when he was already sixty, 
we find in it the most mature reflections of this great mind 
on human life, the soul, moral evil, its punishment, and pos- 
sible expiation. It does not contain, consequently, like the 
Prometheus bound, traditions of primitive history, but the 
thoughts of antiquity on all those most interesting topics ; and 
our task will, later on, consist in discovering, as far as possible, 
how JEschylus found them ; if they were the product of his 
own imagination, or if they had not been proclaimed long 



GREEK AND LATIN POETS. 



403 



before, so that lie might have obtained a knowledge of 
them. 

The great tragic poet was, undoubtedly, a writer eminently 
conservative of old traditions. He was certainly inclined towards 
whatever was truly ancient. He preferred the old Chtonian gods, 
with their dim light of Hades' sun, to the new divinities of this 
sublunary world of earthly light; and he shows it both in his 
Prometheus and in this Oresteian trilogy. He stood firm for 
the old Areiopagos against the new reformers of J ustice. He 
leaned even towards the harsh Erinnyes, and would not have 
their worship abolished in his city of Athens. Yet he pro- 
tested loudly, in this very last poem, against the terrible and 
extreme doctrines that had prevailed for long ages before him 
in Greece ; and he announced the necessity of employing the 
good offices of the new gods — Apollo and Athene chiefly — for 
a reform of the former unnatural severity. 

What had been until his time the doctrine of Greece on sin 
and its expiation, on the curse uttered against races and families, 
on the most' frequent causes of the- wrath of Zeus, and the in- 
variable and pitiless character of the punishment inflicted on. 
those who incurred the wrath of the gods ? It had carried 
harshness to absurdity ; and yet it was only a too sweeping con- 
elusion drawn from true and heavenly-revealed premises. Any 
great crime — murder, adultery, the violation of hospitality by 
lust or other outrage, parricide chiefly, and the murder of in- 
fants, as in the case of Atreus — were thought to be absolutely 
irreparable crimes, which no amount of repentance and expia- 
tion could wash away from the soul or the body. .ISTay, more, 
the guilt passed directly to the posterity of the culprit, until 
the whole race was finally destroyed. Then only were the 
Furies satisfied. OEdipus was not guilty of wilful incest and 
parricide ; yet not only was he awfully punished, but his chil- 
dren perished by their own hands as an atonement for the 
crime of their father. Agamemnon was killed by his own 



404 * GENTILISM. 

wife on account of the atrocious misdeed of Atreus, his father ; 
and so of many others. As Rev. "W". Lucas. Collins expresses 
it in his "iEschylus " (Ancient Classics for General Readers), 
page 133 : " We are so much accustomed to regard each man 
as responsible for his own sins, and these only, that we are in- 
clined to forget how much is to be said for a different view — ■ 
to forget that children bear the iniquity of their parents. Now 
here is a nation — the Hellenic — full of the joy of life, and full 
also of careful and wondering reflection — just like a child, in 
fact, in both ; and this nation gives us .... as its experience, 
that a man is not entirely responsible for his own deeds, but is 
impelled by temptation, which comes on him in punishment 
of his father's crimes. The moral unit, so to speak, is a house, 
not a man. A family sins, and a family is punished. The 
gods, then, are just, though their course of action presses 
harshly on the individual." 

This is an exact exposition of the case, except that the 
writer does not say enough, since he does not state that, in 
many instances, the crime was thought by the Hellenes to be 
incapable of expiation, even did the posterity of the guilty 
embrace a virtuous life. In' this, evidently, the old Greek 
religion erred by excess. 

But how were the Hellenes induced to adopt such extreme 
doctrines ? No reason can be found for it, unless we go back 
to the origin of mankind, and hear the voice of heaven crying 
out to the sinful father of the human race, " Quia audisti vocem 
uxoris tuas, et comedisti de ligno ex cpio prseceperam tibi ne coine- 
deres, maledieta terra in opere tuo, etc." They had heard from 
tradition that the sin of the first man had brought a curse on 
the earth itself, and on his posterity, and they concluded that 
the sin of a father passed to his children ; and all other nations 
of antiquity drew the same conclusion. But they went further. 
They first attributed the same frightful effects to sins of igno- 
rance, as we call them ; taking into account only the material 



GREEK AND LATIN POETS. 



405 



act, and supposing the guilt, when in fact there could be no 
responsibility. And, further, as they had not heard of a Re- 
deemer, and of the treasures of mercy opened through Him 
for the repentant sinner, they supposed that the destruction of 
the whole race or family could alone expiate the crime. It 
was chiefly murder which took such awful proportions, and 
brought such frightful consequences ; because they had heard 
probably from the traditions of their ancestors that the first 
murderer had received for his sentence an absolute curse with- 
out any qualification, " Maledictus eris super terrain quse .... 
suscepit sanguinem fratris tui de manu tua." They had more 
probably yet heard that the second father of mankind, directly 
after the deluge, of which they certainly knew, had littered 
these awful words without a word of attenuation and explana- 
tion : " Quicumque effuderit humanum sanguinem, fundetur 
sanguis illius ; ad imaginem quippe Dei f actus est homo." We 
say that all this had probably come to the knowledge of the 
Hellenes, because if they knew nothing of it, the fixedness of 
their belief in the extreme punishment due to murder, even 
of -material murder, is inexplicable. 

But the Greek error went yet farther. According to it, God 
often punished men and races of men when there had been 
no crime committed, when only an uninterrupted prosperity 
offended Him, and excited His wrath. He was a jealous God, 
not 'in the sense of the Old Testament, jealous of His honor, 
and chastising those who transferred to false gods the worship 
due only to Himself ; but in the sense that man is envious of 
the prosperity of his neighbor. This strange hallucination, 
transferring to the Almighty the low passions of His creatures, 
was universal, not only among the Greeks, but likewise among 
other ancient nations, and especially among the Egyptians. 
Herodotus relates several strange stories based on this error. 
That of Polycrates of Samos is known to everybody. As he 
had never met with any reverse of fortune, with even any dis- 



406 



GENTILISM. 



appointment during his whole life, Amasis of Egypt wrote to 
him : " Your good fortune frightens me ; if you value my 
friendship, deprive yourself of something dear to you, which 
may appease the anger of a jealous God." And he threw into 
the sea a ring of great value, to which he was much attached ; 
but the day after, a fish was brought to him in which the ring 
was found ; and Amasis hearing of it, would not have any 
more intercourse with the too fortunate Polycrates. Shortly 
after, therefore, he was betrayed into the hands of a Persian 
satrap, his enemy, who put him to death with most exquisite 
tortures. Other examples of the same kind, true or false, can 
be read in the work of the Father of History. At least they 
give us an idea of what the Greeks thought of God. iEsehylus 
himself has expressed it in his " Agamemnon," (v. 727) : 

" There lives an old law, framed in ancient days 
In memories of men, that high estate, 
Full-grown, brings forth its young, nor childless dies ; 
But that from good success 
Springs to the race a woe unsatiable." 

The consequence of all these errors of the Greeks is well 
expressed by Mr. Plumptre, as follows (Life of iEschylus, 
page 72) : " Was there a righteous government of the uni- 
verse ? Was the- ruler of gods and men capricious like the 
kings of earth ? "Was he enslaved by some higher law of des- 
tiny which moved on its way in a darkness that none could 
penetrate, and to which even He was subject ? It has often 
been said that this was the theory of the universe which 
^Eschylus embraced ; that the underlying thought in all Greek 
tragedy, is that of a curse cleaving causelessly to a given race, 
generation after generation, against which man struggles vainly, 
each effort to escape only riveting the chains mo e firmly. If 
any explanation is at hand of the dark mystery of evil, it 
is that prosperity, as such, makes men obnoxious to the jealous 
wrath of the gods or of their Euler. 



G-KEEK AND LATIN POETS. 



407 



" It would be far truer, I believe, to say that this is precisely 
the theory of the divine government which ^Eschylus lived to de- 
nounce and protest against Against such a theory the 

heart of ^Eschylus revolted. He craved for a theodihcea, and 
came forward in the spirit, one might almost say, of an Aiha- 
nasius contra mmidum, to attack the prevailing creed." 

IY. 

And to come to the various details of error enunciated above, 
we begin by this last. .zEschylus did not, however, accept this 
error ; which was altogether derogatory to the divine character, 
and is unsupported by any primitive revelation even misunder- 
stood and misrepresented. For immediately after the lines we 
quoted from the tragedy of Agamemnon, Ave read the follow- 
ing protest : 

" But I, apart from all, 

Hold this my creed, alone : 
For, impious act it is that offspring breeds 

Like to their parent stock ; 

For still in every house 
That loves the right, their fate for evermore 

Hath issue good and fair." 

" If prosperity seamsd to be followed by disaster, it was, in 
the thought of ^Eschylus, because men yielded to the tempta- 
tions which it brought with it, and became wanton, haughty, 
and reckless. The sequence of evil might always be traced to 
the fountain-head of some sin which might have been avoid- 
ed, but which, once committed, went on with accelerating 
force .... The woes of Atreus' line, the curse that rested on 
the house of (Edipus, the misery of Troy, are all referred to 
a root-sin which remained unrepented of and unatoned for." 

But in the second place the assertion that the guilt of every 



408 



GENTILISM. 



sin can be washed away by expiation, is repeatedly insisted 
upon in tbe Oresteian trilogy, and thus iEscbylus rejects the 
harsh belief of the heroic age. Orestes exclaims (Eum., v. 423) : 

" I am not now defiled ; no curse abides 
Upon the hand that on thy (Athene's) statue rests'; 
And I will give thee proof full strong of this. 
The law is fixed the murderer should be dumb, » 
Til] at the hand of one who frees from blood, 
The purple stream from yeanling swine run o'er him. 
Long since, at other houses, these dread rites 
We have gone through, slain victims, flowing streams ; 
This care then I can sp^ak of now as gone." 

• 

The cborus in Agamemnon (verse 1541), having asserted 
that " tbe doer bears his deed," that " this is heaven's decree," 
and consequently that " the brood of curses cannot be driven 
from the kingly house," because " tbe house to Ate cleaves," 
Clytemnestra answers forcibly, and as a truth which must be 
now recognized, that, Agamemuon having suffered for the 
crime of his father, " her house is now free from fratricidal 
hate." 

The whole trilogy attests the value of expiation to wash 
away even the crime of matricide. In the last drama (Eum., 
v. 227), Orestes, addressing Athene, says pointedly : 

" Do thou receive me graciously, 
Sin-stained though I have been ; no guilt of blood 
Is on my soul, nor is my hand unclean." 

He repeats it in answer to the Furies themselves (verse 265). 
But we should have to quote almost the whole play, if we were 
to record all the passages of a similar tendency. 

Indeed, more than sixty years before the birth of .ZEschylus, 
Epimenides, the prophet of Crete, had been called by the Athe- 
nians to purify their city afflicted by the plague and discord. 
The Athenians, it seems, already growing more polished, un- 



GEEEK AND LATIN POETS. 



409 



derstood that there must be under a merciful God means of 
reconciliation with Heaven. The old harsh belief appeared to 
be thus giving way to a more just conception of the Deity. 

But did the theory of expiation advocated by iEschylus re- 
quire "a contrite heart," what we call true sorrow for sin? In 
the case of Orestes, this " sorrow " did not exist, since he always 
asserted that he had committed no sin in killing his mother. 
But his case was peculiar. He rested his defence on the plea 
that he had acted on the positive command of " Apollo and the 
Oracle." He was, therefore, not only justified in doing " the 
deed," but he would have been guilty of disobedience to a • 
" divine command," bad he refused. His expiation was conse- 
quently merely an exterior one, such as we are apt to think 
expiation always was among the Greeks. Blood shed by his 
hand required that the blood of victims should wash it away. 

Yet the general opinion on the subject, just mentioned, is 
not correct. CEdipus, certainly, to judge by the Greek drama, 
was deeply afflicted for his double crime, although done in igno- 
rance. And many other similar instances will be recollected 
by the reader. No one can imagine that the Hellenes could 
have been so dead to every sting of conscience as not to know 
that the first condition of reconciliation with God required " a 
contrite heart," as Scripture says. In the words of Mr. Plump- 
tre : " It is enough to note the fact that in the theology of 
vEschylus, as in the ritual which the Cretan prophet had intro- 
duced, and which was propagated by the Orphic and other 
mystic brothei-hoods, the sufferer who groans under the burden 
of guilt needs, over and t above the discipline of suffering and a 
life ruled by law, purification and atonement ; that the purifica- 
tion must be wrought by blood poured or sprinkled on the man 
who sought it ; that he needs the mediation of another in order 
that the purification may be accomplished ; that to render this 
office is the greatest kindness which a friend can show to a 
friend, or host to suppliant guest ; that when this is done, he 



4.10 



GENTILISM. 



may once more draw near, 1 with contrite heart,' ' harmless and 
pure,' to the temples of the gods." 

There remains, finally, on this subject, to consider the opin- 
ion of the Hellenes on the transmission of guilt from father to 
son ; we have said that there was exaggeration in this belief, 
as it made it inevitable, so that a really virtuous posterity had 
to suffer on account of a guilty ancestor. ^Eschylus, certainly, 
in several passages of the trilogy, places the responsibility of 
crime on " the doer," and on no other. " Doer must suffer " 
is a pretty frequent axiom with him. In this ^Eschylus shared 
in the doctrine of Ezechiel (xviii. 2, 4, etc.) The discussion of 
this most obscure and difficult doctrine of the divine govern- 
ment of the universe does not enter into the plan of this work. 
But we are naturally brought, by the mere mention we make 
of it, to consider how the Greek poet came to adopt, with such 
firmness of opinion, moral decisions of such high import, and 
so different from the previous belief of his countrymen. 

We have seen how probably the Hellenes were induced to 
consider great crimes, such as murder, as inexpiable. The 
words of God to Adam, to Cain, to Noah, were emphatic and 
absolute, and did not appear to admit of any mitigation. The 
ancestors of the Pelasgians and Greeks must have heard some- 
thing at least of the words of Noah speaking in the name of 
God, since they knew so well the traditions of the flood. Their 
extraordinary opinion is naturally explained by such tradition, 
and becomes otherwise almost inexplicable. The same may be 
said of the belief in the transmission of guilt from father to 
son, which the Hellenes and other nations must have derived 
from the doctrine of an original sin on the part of the parents 
of the human race, or every conjecture is at fault. 

But the Hebrew people, long before JEschylus, had received 
a more clear, precise, and detailed revelation through Moses 
and the prophets, which did away with many difficulties in- 
volved in the axiomatic character of the first. Moses, trans- 



GREEK AND LATIN POETS. 



411 



mitting to the people of Israel the law of God, had stated with 
precision the various cases of homicide, and assigned the pen- 
alty for each case. Involuntary homicide required no expia- 
tion whatever, hut cities of refuge were appointed for those 
who had been unhappy enough to kill another unwillingly. 
Sins of ignorance required an expiation, as " Leviticus " testi- 
fies. The transmission of guilt from father to son' remained 
always clear and undeniable with respect to the first offence of 
the father of our race ; but with respect to subsequent individ- 
ual cases, other than that of Adam, the utterances appeared to 
be various, because the cases, admitting such transmission or 
not, were various likewise. On this subject, the opinions of 
the long-subsequent Fathers of the Church, chiefly comment- 
ing on the eighteenth chapter of Ezechiel, may be consulted 
with profit in the works of more modem exegetists of ap- 
proved capacity. But the question is, Could JEschylus have 
been induced to adopt milder solutions of those great prob- 
lems by the ^knowledge communicated to him, by means un- 
known to us, of the more precise explanation of the divine 
law contained in the Hebrew Scriptures ? And what might 
have been those means ? 

It is certain that his emphatic declarations in the Oresteian 
trilogy bear often a striking analogy with many passages of 
the Old Testament. Mr. Plumptre, in his " Life of iEschylus," 
does not undertake to decide the question absolutely. He 
says: "Whether the phenomenon be one of parallelism in 
religious feeling which often meets us in races that have had 
no contact with each other, or be due to the influence of Sem- 
itic thought passing from Syria to the ' Isles of Chittim,' and 
so through Epimenides to Greece, we need not now discuss." 
Yet he later admits that the belief of iEschylus on these mo- 
mentous questions is " every way analogous to that which is 
dominant in the Old Testament." "We need no more than this 
admission. 



412 



GENTILISM. 



y. 

We have not, however, yet exhausted the subject. The 
most important, perhaps, as well as the most striking part of it, 
remains to he developed. "We shall endeavor to do this with 
all the brevity possible. The doctrine of the great Greek 
poet, in his Oresteian trilogy, contains axioms — we may call 
them so — on the divine government of the world, which are 
found nowhere else in Hellenic philosophy and poetry, and 
which raise it to an elevation approaching that of some of the 
most solemn utterances of Holy Scripture. The great ques- 
tions, Why is there evil in the world ? and why does God per- 
mit evil at all ? are, no doubt, the most difficult of ethical 
theology, ^schylus attempts to solve them, and he does it as 
no other Greek writer ever did. 

First, he admits the great law of suffering for all : 

" Save the Gods, 
Who free from suffering lives out all his life ? " — (Agam., 536.) 

There is, especially, in the same play, beginning verse 346, 
a full description by the Chorus, beginning, " O Zeus, our 
King ! " of all the woes endured by the Trojans, as well as by 
the Greeks during the war, so generalized, although full of 
details, so heart- rending and bitter, that it looks as an effusion 
of Pascal when speaking of the miseries of our humanity. 
The following short cmotation will give the reader some idea 
of it. After having described the woes of Ilion, the poet turns 
to the Hellenes : 

" From Hellas' ancient shore 
A sore distress that causeth pain of heart 

Is seen in every house. 
Yea, many things there are that touch the quick: 

For those whom each did send 

He knowetk ; but, instead 



GREEK AND LATIN POETS. 



413 



Of living men, there comes to each man's home 

Funereal urns alone, 

And ashes of the dead. 
For Ares, trafficking for golden coin 

The lifeless shapes of men, 
And in the rush of battle holding scales, 

Sends now from Ilion, 

Dust from the funereal pyre." 

But how does the poet look on this universal spectacle of 
gloom ? Is Zeus blind % And does he afflict mortals without 
any other object than inflicting suffering ? iEschylus could 
not, if he would, think thus of Him whom he acknowledges 
in the same drama as the Supreme, and, we may say, only 
God (v. 158) : 

" O Zeus — whatever He be, 

If that Name please Him well, 

By that on Him I call : 
Weighing all other names, I fail to guess 
Aught else but Zeus, if I would cast aside 

Clearly, in very deed, 
From off my soul this weight of vaguest care." 

Why is it that this God, on account of whose Name " every 
one ought to cast aside the weight of care," has established all 
over the world this law of universal suffering ? The answer of 
^Eschylus is plain, unmistakable. In many cases, by " suffer- 
ing" the sins of many men are punished, and not only in this 
life, but likewise hereafter ; for, speaking of Hades, he says : 

" There, as men relate, a second Zeus 
Judges men's evil deeds, and to the dead 
Assigns their last great ftenalties." — (Suppl. 226.) 

And (in Eumen., v. 168) Erinnys declares of the sinner : 

" Though 'neath the earth he flee, he is not freed, 
For he, blood-stained, shall find upon his head 
Another after me, 
Destroyer foul and dread." 



414 



GENTILISM. 



Again (v. 325) : 

" Nor shall death set him free." 

This is but a specimen of many other passages we might 
have quoted. But there ax*e cases when we, at least, cannot 
perceive that any crime has been committed worthy of those 
"great penalties," and yet they are inflicted. The poet sup- 
poses, even, that sometimes man may suffer in this life without 
having really deserved it. How is this ? Can we justify the 
government of Zeus ? His answer partially unfolds a doctrine 
often repeated in the trilogy, chiefly in "Agamemnon," and 
which sheds a halo of almost Christian light around the enigma. 
Then, says ^Eschylus, nad/i/iara become \iaQq\iara ; suffering 
brings knowledge, wisdom, and,' consequently, gain : 

" Zeus who leadeth men in wisdom's way, 
And fixeth fast the law, 
Wisdom by pain to gain." — (V. 170.) 

Again (v.- 241) : 

" Justice turns the scale 
For those to whom through pain 
At last comes wisdom's gain." 

And in " Eum." (v. 491) : 

" There are with whom it is well 
That awe should still abide, 
As watchmen o'er their souls ; 
Calm wisdom, gained by sorrow, profits much." 

Thus, in ^Eschylus, we find the recognition of a moral dis- 
cipline by which men 

" May rise on stepping-stones 
Of their dead selves to higher things." 

This last reflection we find in Mr. Plumptre's " Life of 



GEEEK AND LATIN POETS. 



415 



iEschylus," from whom also we took the last quotations. In- 
deed, we mostly use his translation of the Greek poet, as it 
is admitted to be the best we now possess in English. 

This remarkable doctrine of JEschylus is derived, it sesms, 
from that " Orphic literature " of which we have already said 
so much. From which also are derived several other expres- 
sions of the tragic poet which appear in his works in the garb 
of proverbial and traditional sayings, such as the extraordinary 
phrase used long after as addressed to St. Paul : " It is useless 
to kick against the pricks." We have already discussed the 
probable origin of the Orphic poetry ; and we will here 
merely invite the reader's attention to the above as an addi- 
tional proof of what we have all along maintained, namely, 
that it was not the spurious product of Christian writers of 
the third or fourth century who clothed in a new garb the pre- 
vious writings of Plato ; since an Hellenic author, who flourished 
before Plato, knew that old poetry and profited by it. 

VI. 

The same ^Eschylus, as given by Justin Martyr (in Monar- 
chia) sets forth the power of God (in one of his lost tragedies) 
in the following splendid outburst of poetry : 

" Place God apart from mortals ; and think not 
That He is, like thyself, corporeal. 
Thou knowest Him not. Now He appears as fire, 
Dread force ! as water now ; and now as gloom ; 
And in the beasts is dimly shadowed forth, 
In wind, and cloud, in lightning, thunder, rain ; 
And minister to Him the seas and rocks, 
Each fountain and the water's floods and streams. 
The mountains tremble, and the earth, the vast 
Abyss of sea, and towering height of hills, 
When on them looks the Sovereign's awful eye : 
Almighty is the glory of the Most High God." 
28 



416 



GENTILISJVL 



Is not this another proof of our so-often-repeated assertion : 
that the higher we go in time, the more orthodox are the 
ancient writers, and the more like they appear to the true in- 
spired prophets of God ? JEschylus, it is known, is the oldest 
great tragic writer of Greece. 

Sophocles, ahnost his contemporary, is likewise full of grand 
thoughts, worthy of a remote age. A most remarkable passage 
of one of his lost poems, has been preserved by Hecatseus, and 
is quoted by St. Clement of Alexandria (Stromata) : 

*' One in very truth, God is one, 
Who made the heaven and the far stretching earth, 
The Deep's blue billow, and the might of winds. 
But of us mortals, many erring far 
la heart, as solace for our woes, have raised 
Images of gods — of stone, or else of brass, 
Or figures wrought of gold or ivory ; 
And sacrifices and vain festivals 
To these appointing, deem ourselves devout." 

The old Greek comic poets, who flourished before Aristo- 
phanes, have also often rendered testimony to the superior 
orthodoxy of early literature. Unfortunately we possess only 
a few fragments of their works. We have already spoken of 
Epicharmus, whom Plato was fond of consulting. A passage 
of Diphilus, quoted by St. Clement, is remarkable for the pre- 
cise notion he entertained of a future judgment : 

" Thinkest thou, O Niceratus, that the dead, 
"Who in all kinds of luxury in life have shared, 
Escape the Deity, as if forgot ? 
There is an eye of justice, which sees all. 
For two ways, as we deem, to Hades lead — 
One for the good, the other for the bad. 
But if earth hides both for ever, then, 
Go plunder, steal, rob, and be turbulent. 
But err not. For in Hades judgment is 
Which God the Lord of all will execute, , 
Whose name too dreadful is for me to name, 



GREEK AND LATIN POETS. 



417 



Who gives to sinners length of earthly life. 
If any mortal thinks that day by day, 
While doing ill, he eludes the gods' keen sight, 
His thoughts are evil ; and when justice has 
The leisure, he shall then detected be 
So thinking. Look, whoever you be that say 
That there is not a God. There is, there is. 
If one, by nature evil, evil does, 
Let him redeem the time; for such as he 
t Shall by and by due punishment receive." 

We have before remarked that Plato also had very precise 
and clear ideas of a future judgment ; not before the tribunal 
of Minos, but before that of God. Did he take them from 
the works of the comic poets (strange comic poets indeed) ? 
or from the fragments left of old philosophers or lawgivers ? 

We will conclude our quotations by a short passage from 
Aratus, who lived in the third century before Christ, and whom 
St. Paul honored by a quotation. Our readers may like to see 
something more explicit of the text out of which the great 
apostle of the Gentiles took the phrase, " Ipsius enim genus 
sumus." It is taken from the " Phaenoniena " of Aratus : 

" With Zeus let us begin ; Whom let us ne'er, 
Being men, leave unexpressed. All full of Zeus, 
The streets and throngs of men, and full the sea, 
And shores, and everywhere we Zeus enjoy. 

For we also are 

Mis offspring ; Who bland to men, 

Propitious signs displays, and to their tasks 
Arouses. For these signs in heaven He fixed, 
The constellations spread, and crowned the year 
With stars ; to show to men the seasons' tasks, 
That all things may proceed in order sure. 
Him ever first, Him last too they arlore : 
Hail Father, marvel great — great boon to men ! " 

A great number of such texts can be found in Eusebius' 
" Prseparatio Evangelica," in Clement of Alexandria, in St. Jus- 



418 



GENTILISM. 



tin Martyr " de Monarehia," and in many other Fathers of the 
Church. 

Hence St. Clement of Alexandria could say in general of 
the question which occupies us (Strom., Book v.) : " ISTo race 
anywhere of tillers of the soil, or nomads, and not even of 
dwellers in cities, can live without being imbued with the faith 
of one superior Being. Wherefore, every eastern nation, and 
every nation touching the western shores, or the north, or to- 
wards the south — all have one and the same preconception of 
Him who hath appointed the government of the universe ; 
since the most universal of His operations equally pervade all. 
Much more did the philosophers among the Greeks, devoted to 
investigation, starting from the harbariwn philosophy, attribute 
providence to the invisible, and sole, and most powerful, and 
most skilful, and supreme cause of all things." 

TIL 

Knowing, as we do, how Latin literature became early im- 
pressed with the Hellenic form, and adopted not only the polish 
and exterior elegance of Greek poetry, but chiefly the thoughts 
and even phraseology of that brilliant nation, we cannot be 
surprised that the same phenomenon, the study of which has 
occupied us so long as far as regards the east of Europe, should 
have been equally remarkaVe in the west ; so that the Soman 
philosophers, mere copyists of those of Hellas, became the 
apostles of the old traditions among their countrymen, and im- 
parted to them a faint flush of the light of primitive barbaricm 
philosophy, as St. Clement of Alexandria calls it, or rather of 
the primitive divine revelation imparted to mankind, as we 
would prefer to say. 

But it is chiefly among the Latin poets that this becomes 
remarkable ; although many passages of Cicero might be quoted 



GKEEK AND LATIN POETS. 



419 



in support of our position. If one of them — Lucretius — de- 
voted his immense talent to the propagation of atheism and 
materialism, and to the denial of the great truths so prevalent 
still in his time, all the others, even those from whom it was 
least to be expected, such as Ovid, have invariably proclaimed 
those noble conceptions of ancient seers and poets, relative to 
creation, the golden age, the first sin, its punishment, the flood, 
and the promise of happier days, committed finally to immor- 
tal verse by Virgil himself, as the " renovation of ages," and 
the renewal of the " reign of Virgin Astrsea," or Justice. 

• When we read the beginning of the first book of the " Meta- 
morphoses " of Ovid, we are surprised to see so many points of 
coincidence with revealed truth in Genesis / and although pa- 
ganism had certainly tainted many of those great original tradi- 
tions, yet so much of them remain that we wonder how they 
could have been so well preserved in the midst of such a mul- 
titude of absurd myths and fables. The exception of Lucre- 
tius' poem increases still more our surprise ; since it was only 
an exception ; and the Romans of the time knew that to be so. 
Hence it was opposed with a kind of horror by all those who 
had not admitted the doctrines of Epicurus. The fact, also, 
that a great polemic writer of the seventeenth century, Cardi- 
nal Polignae, thought he would render a service to religion by 
writing a refutation of Lucretius in Latin verse, shows that 
those times of the Augustan age were very like our own, when 
the flood of light poured upon mankind by the revelation of the 
Gospel is dimmed by the faint equivocations of adversaries, 
and has to be kept in its brightness by renewed and definite 
affirmations of the truth. At the epoch, therefore, of the 
greatest moral corruption in Rome, the truth was known, or at 
least suspected, by many ; and only a comparatively few re- 
jected it, in order to introduce false theories and disorganizing 
Utopias ; much as we witness in our age. 

It must be particularly remarked, that the Latin poets did 



420 GENTILISM. 

not proclaim it as a modern discovery of philosophers, as a 
bright result of individual inquiry. They sang of it as a " pre- 
cious deposit " handed down to us from ancestors, as a deriva 
tion, in fact, of a heavenly voice addressed to man from the 
beginning. The opposing systems — those flippant theories of 
atheism and unbelief — were openly declared to be new ; they 
had been found out by the deep minds of philosophers of latter 
times ; and the very course they advocated was the rejection of 
old tales, as they called them, for the pure doctrine of modern 
philosophy. "Would it be possible for us to find a more cogent 
argument in support of our thesis ? 

It is unnecessary to burden our pages with a number of quo- 
tations from the Latin poets, as all those who are likely to be 
our readers are quite familiar with them. A glance at them in 
order to elicit their significance in relation to our subject will 
be sufficient. Who has not been struck with the strange ano- 
maly of a long series of authors, poets principally, whose chief 
source of inspiration is the prevalent and popular mythology, 
brilliant on the surface, it is true, but in reality absurd, irra- 
tional, and immoral ; yet occasionally startling one by concepts 
of the highest order, involving of necessity a deep knowledge 
of things human and divine, and speaking of the highest con- 
cerns of the soul, almost as an enlightened Christian would in 
a refined age ? And, we may add, that, when those great and 
immortal writers venture to touch on those sublime topics, 
they invariably tell us that it is ancient wisdom which speaks 
through them ; that they are merely the mouth-pieces of old 
seers and prophets ; and that it is the deep poetiy of the most 
ancient times from which they draw their inspiration. 

Thus, in Greece and Rome, we see two great streams of relig- 
ion and ethics running parallel to each other ; most distinct, 
and in every respect opposite; yet, watering the same coun- 
tries, feeding the same soil, and nourishing apart, but in the 
6ame fields, flowers and fruits on one side, and baneful poisons 



GKEEK AND LATIN POETS. 



421 



on the other. Unfortunately one of these streams was the 
only one apparent to the multitude, the only one from which 
mankind received its " culture," as it is called, the only one to 
mould men, and give them a shape. This was polytheism. 
The other running, as it were, under ground ; well known to a 
few, because deep knowledge was then possible only to a few, 
and these few were afraid of communicating to the multitude 
doctrines which they were not prepared to receive. 

Hence, in order to make ourselves of these modern ages 
accjuainted with the existence of that hidden stream in anti- 
quity, we have to search with untiring industry into the varied 
lore of those old times, and to avail ourselves of all the aid 
our Christian criticism and appreciation can afford us. And 
although the " ancients " have been known and studied, not 
only from the " revival " in the fifteenth centxvry, but from the 
very formation of modern nations after the overflow of barba- 
rism, yet it is only in our days that the true knowledge of the 
tendency and manifold bearings of the literature of Greece and 
Rome has begun to be truly known and appreciated. 

It may be even said that in the opinion of many, even living 
authors, the noble river flowing from the primitive ages, and 
enriching the literature of Eastern and Central Europe during 
pagan times, is not considered as sufficiently ascertained to be 
altogether relied upon ; and these men see only in polytheist 
Greece and Rome a mass of absurd tales and conceits impossi- 
ble to be systematized. Thus the author of " Gentile and 
Jew," writing of Gentilism, brings forward the treasure of a 
vast erudition, but fragmentary, confused, incapable of being 
reduced to any approved whole. It is the chaos of a discon- 
nected polytheism, whose limbs, broken and disjointed, lay be- 
fore you in a maze of confusion ; from the study of which you 
rise up not one whit more, enlightened than when you sat down 
to its perusal. As to the other hidden stream flowing silently 
from remote ages, and bearing the testimony of primitive w is- 



422 



GENTILISM. 



dom and true culture, not a word is said of it ; probably be- 
cause, in the opinion of the author, it would have been unscien- 
tific-^- this is the word now used — start what to him appeared a 
mere problematic theory, since, forsooth, the " ancients " did not 
positively announce it in so many words, or only rarely, and 
it is thus to be deduced from diligent investigation, erudite 
reasoning, and exhumation of a long-buried literature. For the 
same reason, most probably, the same writer, in speaking of 
Judaism, and pretending to unfold the true religion of the 
" people of God," does not mention, even once, so far as we 
remember, the typical character of their worship, which was 
in fact the chief one. JSTo allusion is made to the temporary, 
figurative, and shadowy nature of a religion whose only object 
was twofold : to keep more securely, and with more purity, 
the deposit of the old traditions than the Gentiles could do, 
and to prepare the world for a universal belief and worship, 
at whose appearing the special mission of Judaism would cease. 
Hence, all the splendid interpretations of the Mosaic law and 
customs, given by all the Fathers of the Church, without excep- 
tion, either Greek or Latin, are thrown aside as unworthy, it 
would seem, of the exegesis of our enlightened age ; as if 
Origen particularly, the great interpreter of Judaic myths and 
figures, was altogether a childish exegetist of Scripture, in com- 
parison with the numerous array of German naturalistic ex- 
pounders of the Bible ! 

To our thinking, on the other hand, the existence in Greece 
and Rome, of a mighty undercurrent of what we call the prim- 
itive revelation, is a well-ascertained fact, although undoubt- 
edly the great mass of Romans and Greeks was completely un- 
aware of it ; and even those writers in whose noble productions 
the sacred fragments of this tradition are yet now found, were 
often themselves unable to appreciate them thoroughly. Py- 
thagoras and Plato, the iast one chiefly, seem to have been the 
two men who were the most fully imbued with the holiness 



GEEEK AND LATIN POETS. 



423 



of the ancient doctrine ; and who spoke of it with a respect, a 
conviction, and a noble simplicity worthy of the subject. In 
the Latin world it had become, we may say, a mere literary 
fire-hug, good for an exhibition of poetic talent, and to strike 
the beholder with amazement and surprise. Ovid, probably, 
saw in those great thoughts of ancient time, only a means of 
turning agreeable and pointed verses ; and he must have read 
over many times with a secret, but well-pleased vanity, the lines 
in which he described the noble and erect standing of man in 
the midst of grovelling and low-born animals : " Os homini sub- 
lime dedit . . . ." As to Virgil, it is enough to say that in the 
Eclogue, where he seems to be a translator of Isaiah, he had 
most probably in view only to celebrate the birth of a promis- 
ing boy to his friend Pollio. 

Yet, in ' spite of all this, the fact is indubitable that in the 
midst of idolatry, there was then in pagan Europe a faint 
remembrance of holier doctrines and promises ; and this ife all 
we have to establish. 

VIII. 

But of the other stream, it may be said to have been over- 
whelming and devastating. We have endeavored to impart 
some faint idea of it. To convey anything like an adequate 
conception would require a volume of much larger bulk than 
we should like to impose on the patience of our readers. It 
would require a condensation of all that the Fathers of the 
Church in the four or five first centuries have said of the fool- 
ishness, absurdity, immorality, and universal demoralization of 
polytheism. It woidd require a solid array of passages scattered 
through a large number of volumes, and unknown, for the most 
part of them, to our generation, to whom the taste is wanting 
of going through the simple enumeration of those absurdities. 
Yet it is a sad fact that these " absurdities " were the " daily 



424 



GENTILISM. 



bread " of great and apparently enlightened nations ; that they 
formed, we may say, the staple of their life ; and that for mil- 
lions of human beings, during many ages, there was no other 
religion ; indeed, no other poetry, art, ancient history, current 
literature, nor source of ethics, or national aspirations, but 
what was derived from the senseless and immoral legends of 
those gods and goddesses. And even the few noble minds who 
had sense enough to despise and abominate the whole corrupt 
mass, found themselves under the necessity of speaking with 
respect of it ; yea, of practising outwardly the ridiculous nonsense 
of the national religion, and to become fools among fools, and 
dotards anion" - children. 

But what ought to attract our attention chiefly, is the ulti- 
mate disintegration which those senseless rites brought among 
nations submitted to them. We saw it existing, to' a certain 
extent, in Ilindostan, and to a great degree in Egypt, where we 
particularly remarked it, in speaking of animal-worship along 
the Nile. We observed the same in Greece, described in a 
bold sketch, although in a few words, by St. Clement of Alex- 
andria. Religion, which ought to be the bond of nations, had 
become the source of endless divisions ; and if the Greeks had 
not had their common language, their common taste for art, 
their ardent love of liberty, and their primitive spirit of coali- 
tion in forming confederacies, their religion would have carried 
among them disintegration down to the last social element — 
the village or the hamlet. Then they would not have had to 
say only, "Hera is worshipped at Samos, Apollo at Delos, 
Athene at Athens, Artemis Orthia at Sparta, Venus at Gnidos 
and Cythera, Zeus at Olympia, and so of the others." They 
would have had to complete the list which St. Clement of 
Alexandria only began ; and the whole would have been a per- 
fect picture of a complete decomposition of polytheism itself. 
Prof. Ileeren — whom we have already quoted so frequently, 
and whom we like to quote on account of the lucidity of his 



GREEK AND LATIN POETS. 



425 



ideas, the general sobriety of his views, and his thorough 
knowledge of antiquity — is obliged to use the following lan- 
• guage (Ancient Greece, Ch. 7th) : "Unlike the religions of 
the East, the religion of the Hellenes was supported by no 
sacred books, was connected with no peculiar doctrines ; it 
could not, therefore, serve like the former to unite a nation by 

means of a common religion As the nation had no 

caste of priests, nor even a united order of priesthood, it nat- 
urally followed, that though individual temples could in a cer- 
tain degree become national temples, this must depend, for the 
most part, on accidental circumstances ; and where everything 
was voluntary, nothing could be settled by established forms 
like those which prevailed in other countries." Ileeren, it is 
true, afterwards pretends that in spite of these adverse circum- 
stances, two or three temples became really national, on account 
of the oracles connected with them ; he names those of Do- 
dona and Delphi, which he thinks formed, through the oracles, 
the connecting link between politics and religion ; and he says 
that : " Their great political influence, especially in the States 
of the Doric race, is too well known from history to make it 
necessary to adduce proofs of it." But finally he confesses — ■ 
and this is worthy of attention — that " Their great political in- 
fluence became less after the Persian war When the re- 
ciprocal hatred of the Athenians and Spartans excited them to 
the fury of civil war, how much suffering would have been 
spared to Greece, if the voice of the gods had been able to 
avert the storm ! " 

This quotation from the Gottingen Professor offers a strong 
confirmation of our argument ; since he himself does not see 
any national temple and national religion in Greece, except 
through oracles, which originally were counted to the number 
of three or four, gradually were reduced to that of Delphi 
alone, and finally this last, not long after the Persian war, be- 
came silent. That silenca had been already of a long duration 



426 



GENTILISM. 



when Plutarch wrote his treatise : De oraculorum defectu. 
Hence we ought not to be surprised, especially after perusing 
these remarks of Heeren, that in the time of St. Clement of 
Alexandria, long after the disappearance of all oracular priest- 
esses, religion was reduced to the state he so graphically de- 
scribed. 

The Greek nationality was never compact ; it was always, in 
fact, an aggregation of small tribes, each with its customs, tra- 
ditions, and tales. Plutarch is called a gossiping writer ; but 
on that account, precisely, he was eminently Grecian. And 
Herodotus himself shines particularly with that amiable quality 
of what the French call "un conteur.'' All the great Hellenic 
writers, not excepting the tragic dramatists, show the same 
idiosyncrasy. We may call it the clannish spirit, fond of vil- 
lage tales. In a word, the supposed powerful confederacy of 
.Grecian States was merely an aggregation of clans, constantly 
changing their respective attitude by forming or dissolving 
their alliances or feuds. And this is so remarkable, that any- 
one who labors under the almost universal mistake of suppos- 
ing a strong cohesion among them, owing to what is called 
their patriotism, is, or ought to be, altogether unsettled in his 
belief, when he reads in the great work of the " Father of His- 
tory," that the only Greeks who fought at Marathon were 
" some thousand Athenians, and a few hundred Plataeans ; " 
and that when Xerxes with his millions of men invaded Hellas, 
even before he left Persia, all the Greek States had granted 
him " earth and water," except the Spartans who perished at 
the Thermopylae to the number of " three hundred," and the 
Athenians who left their city to obey "the oracle " and repair- 
ed on their " wooden ships " to wander about the ocean whilst 
the enemy burned Athens. We have no wish to detract from 
the glory attached to the great names of Leonida's, Miltiades, 
and Themistocles. Their memory is immortal, and the forti- 
tude alone with which, at the head of a few thousand brave 



GREEK AND LATIN POETS. 



427 



warriors, they encountered the mighty armaments of the Per- 
sians, would of itself render them for ever glorious. But it 
would be folly to think that the innumerable troops led on by 
Mardonius and Xerxes were defeated only by the diminutive 
forces which met them at Thermopylae and Marathon ; and 
even by the Athenian fleet' in the vEgean sea. What would 
become, in that case, of the memorable saying of Napoleon, 
that success is attached to " les gros batmllons" ? The fact is, 
that the Persians were chiefly defeated by their own huge bulk. 
They were too unwieldly to manoeuvre, and too numerous to 
feed. 

The great Persian war, therefore, is no proof of a strong 
nationality among the Greeks. All the events of the contest 
prove the contrary. The Persian hosts, as they rolled on 
Greece, met a few tribes, standing resolutely before them ; 
and as might have been expected, they melted away in a few 
months in the plains and around the mountains of a country 
where they could not be recruited, and could not live after 
having " drank the ri vers " and devoured the " produce of the 
fields " of the year previous. 

But how is it that there was no compact nationality among 
the Greeks 1 They appeared made to form a great nation. 
They all had strong aspirations after the same form of govern- 
ment — the republican ; they loved their country, spoke the 
same language, were great organizers, mighty colonizers ; they 
all had the same tastes of simplicity of living, apparel, and 
dwelling. With the exception of those barbarians of Sparta, 
they carried elegance and good taste farther than it has ever 
been carried by any other race on earth ; they were brave, well 
instructed, well made, strong of body, acute of mind, etc., etc. 
How is it, we repeat again, that they never formed a great 
nation ? The reason is plain, many will say : " They could 
not coalesce to form a large State, through their love of liberty, 
and thus they remained wedded to their fragmentary exist- 



428 



GENTILISM. 



ence." This, we confess, cannot satisfy us. They could have 
remained free, even in a different state of agglomeration. 
Great organizers as they were, they could have introduced the 
free institutions common to all the tribes, into a larger organ- 
ism than that of the city. They never thought of it ; and 
Plato himself, in writing his description of an imaginary 
republic, supposes it confined to a few villages and one larger 
city. And when there was question of establishing it in fact, 
he relied on the promise of Dionysius, the Tyrant of Syracuse, 
to give him a few miles of territory in Sicily. "Within thus 
narrow a range were limited the views of the Greeks as to 
the constitution of States. What was the cause of this ? The 
true explication is to be found in the following axiom : To 
expand the ideas, and to raise the mind up to the level of so 
great a subject as that of the permanent constitution of civil 
society, religion must be the preponderating term. Ilence 
Rome, in order to extend and consolidate her power, had to 
spread her religious ideas by admitting the gods of the nations 
she conquered. It was an unsatisfactory solution of the ques- 
tion, and could not succeed in the long run ; but something of 
the kind had to be done, and this, at least, she did. 

Greece never attempted anything of the same nature, with 
the exception of the two or three oracular temples she built, 
which, in time, disappeared, and left her to the desolation of 
" individualism." Here is to be found the true explanation of 
the clannish political views of the Greeks, even of their ablest 
writers on political philosophy. The disorganization of relig- 
ious thought amongst the Hellenes was the true source of their 
complete social and political disorganization. Heeren himself 
saw a great difference, which he especially noticed, between 
the religious worship of Hellas and that of India or Egypt, 
with respect to nationality or universality of belief. Yet, as 
was seen, disintegration entered deeply, in course of time, into 
the cult of these two great races. Neither India nor Egypt 



GREEK AND LATIN POETS. 



429 



were so well known in the time of the Gottingen Professor as 
they are now.- It is now ascertained much more clearly than 
it was forty years ago, that a deep " sectarian " strife, intro- 
duced chiefly by the rank idolatry of the tcmtras — although 
many ages before Buddhism had already produced the same 
result — agitated Hindostan and divided it into fragments, in 
spite of the pretended national religion, of which Heeren 
speaks. And, as to the Egyptians of Pharaonic times, we 
think we have proved sufficiently the great difference in homo- 
geneity of thought throughout the country, between the old 
dynasties previous to the eighteenth, and the last "ones during 
which Amasis and Psammeticus flourished. The opposition of 
north and south, city and city, hamlet and hamlet, appears 
principally in the later times ; and it must have been 
so, owing to the ever - increasing division in worship and 
customs. 

At t the very outset of the human race, it is true that the 
division among men appears, at first sight, to have been as 
great as it ever was afterwards ; for then clanship was flourish- 
ing everywhere. The whole globe was covered with tribes. 
The patriarchal epoch was eminently an epoch of septs. Does 
not this settle the question ? Have we not defeated ourselves ? 
Not in the least. First, the tribal state in mankind subsisted 
many ages after the patriarchal period had ceased ; and, as we 
have before observed, the work of Strabo is the most irrefrag- 
able proof of our assertion. Let any one open it anywhere at 
random, he will find that his geography is a mere tribal geog- 
raphy. Yet Strabo lived under Augustus. Thus the Roman 
Empire itself had not changed this state of things, nor had it 
destroyed the primitive septs. It had only done what all pre- 
vious empires had effected. It had aggregated living tribal 
organizations into a huge administrative system. In fact, we 
repeat, in going through the pages of universal history, the 
reader has to come down to our own days before he reaches 



430 



GEKTILISM. 



the great epoch of the absorption of tribes into huge bodies 
called " nationalities," yea, more, centralized nationalities. 

We know how Napoleon III. thought he had discovered a 
great fact — and had immortalized himself by the discovery — 
when he threw the word before Europe and mankind. The 
fact is, the word was scarcely used before. Certainly it was 
not understood in this its new sense ; and we conclude that 
the latter times of polytheism had no advantage, in that 
regard, over the patriarchal period. Tribal division existed 
in both cases ; but this is not the question we are discussing. 
The real question is of mental division, doctrinal antipathy, 
religious animosity. There was nothing of the kind in prim- 
itive times. All the tribes originally worshipped One God ; 
had the same moral principles, the same traditions on creation, 
providence, sin, expiation, aspirations towards a future which 
would repair the evil. Pantheism, polytheism, idolatry, are 
not coeval with the origin of man, in spite of what the new 
" leaders of thought " may say. They came afterwards, and 
brought on " sectarianism ;" that is, antagonism in mind, strife 
in belief, division in hopes, confusion in worship, anarchy in 
the spiritual world of man, and as the ultimate conclusion, the 
frightful appearance of mere " individualism," which is rising 
again in our days, after having been exorcised by Christianity. 

Thus the physical globe itself, by which we began these con- 
siderations, and to which we return at the end of them, was 
altogether diverted from the primitive plan of God. The seas, 
the rivers, the mountains, the deserts did not continue to be 
mere geographical limits, to be subsequently overcome, and to 
become — some of them, at least — a powerful means of inter- 
communication. These limits did no more separate commu- 
nities united in faith, and accepting — all — the same social and 
religious principles, showing the unity of their origin by the 
admission of the same great truths which lay at the bottom of 
all minds. They, now, divided races dissociated by mutual 



GREEK AND LATIN POETS. 



431 



antipathies, religious, political, and social. They made the 
globe, which we call " our Earth," intended, at first, to be the 
dwelling of a universal family, having the same worship, the 
same hopes and fears, the same eternal destiny and temporal 
happiness — they made it — what ? An agglomeration of dis- 
tinct " small parks," each inclosed with a strong fence ; each 
containing a peculiar kind of wild beasts, growling at the bar- 
barians outside, and intent finally on devouring each other, 
after having; tried to enslave or devour the " foreigners." And 
this horrible state of things was caused chiefly by a frightful 
departure from a primitive common faith, and by the adoption 
of separate and degrading superstitions, all evidently originat- 
ing from the Evil One, the great adversary of God and man, 
wishing to be worshipped by senseless admirers, and to intro- 
duce on earth the anarchy of hell. 

And to show how the configuration of the globe, so evi- 
dently made for an altogether different purpose, was taken ad- 
vantage of by him, to divide and sub-divide mankind, we have 
only to turn a moment to the physical geography of Greece, 
since it is of Greece we are now speaking. 

Look first at the southern peninsula called Peloponnesus, a 
kind of miniature Switzerland, with its small central plateau, 
celebrated under the name of Arcadia. The very word evokes 
ideas of peaceful pastoral life, rural happiness, and never-fail- 
ing abundance. Yet, from this central paradise radiate seven 
short chains of mountains, which will divide effectually as 
many tribes, if not more, all hostile to one another. The Tay- 
getus, one of them, will interpose its rude peaks and impractic- 
able valleys between the Laeonians and Messenians. In spite 
of the apparently insurmountable obstacle, a relentless war will 
be waged between the two tribes. And if, for many centuries, 
the Messenians are reduced to " helotism," the spirit of mutual 
hatred will never be extinguished, and Epaminondas, much 
later, will think himself immortalized by a final revenge in 
29 



432 



GENTILISM. 



favor of the Messenians in vindicating the rights of his own 
Boeotia. 

Argolis, towards the east, will be so completely separated 
from the rest of the peninsula by huge rocks, but chiefly by 
the sea, that after the great renown of its primitive heroes — 
the Atridse — it shall literally sleep for centuries in an inglorious 
isolation from the rest of the world. The dramatic stage, bow- 
ever, will take good care to remind all posterity that the land 
of Argos was stained at first by frightful crimes, the feast of 
At reus and Thyestes, the adultery of Clytemnestra, the murder 
of Agamemnon by this she-wolf, dying herself finally under 
the dagger of her own son, Orestes. With such an unenviable 
renown, the Argives did well not to engage any more in strife. 
But their subsequent obscurity is a strong proof of their com- 
plete isolation, favored by an almost insular position on the 
eea, and a complete want of intercourse with their nearest Pe- 
loponnesian neighbors. 

Elis, in the west of the peninsula, formed an exception there- 
in, and remained at peace, owing to its sacred character, which 
made it, really, with Delphi, the only spot of Greece where the 
Hellenes really thought they had a common religion ; and on 
this account Elis enjoyed happiness. 

But with the Achaeans, on the north-west, begin again the 
spectacle we have already depicted. If there was anywhere 
among the Hellenes a small compact body animated with the 
feeling of opposition to all mankind, it was certainly to be found 
in Achaia. This egotistical disposition is admirably rendered 
by the name of League — the Achaean league — a combination of 
twelve cities against all the rest. A great effort indeed of the 
spirit of brotherhood ! To be able to combine twelve small 
communities isolated from the rest of mankind by rocks on the 
south, and the sea on the north, and to succeed in persuading 
them that it was their interest — all Ionians as they were sur- 
rounded by Dorians — to form a league against the predominant 



GREEK AND LATIN POETS. 



433 



I'orie race ! This is, indeed, a true picture of what we have 
been all along insisting upon. This " league," however, must 
not be confounded with the celebrated one, formed against the 
power of Macedonia, and of Rome, and which embraced cities 
outside of the small limits of Achaia. "We speak of the primi- 
tive and ancient league, composed only of the Ionian cities, 
spread along the gulf of Corinth, and which is said to have 
been first formed as early as eleven hundred years before Christ. 
It was a compact of twelve towns— Patras and Dyme were the 
most important — to stand together against the surrounding 
world, and to threaten with retaliation anyone bold enough to 
attack any one of them. It was the only means they had of 
procuring for themselves quiet during a thousand years ; for 
this was about the length of diiration of the " league." It is a 
perfect picture of what the world then was ; each small commu- 
nity entrenched behind high mountains, large rivers, or the sea. 
Was it for such a purpose that these bold land-marks had been 
drawn on the surface of our globe % 

Finally, the whole Peloponnesian system of egotism culmi- 
nated in the single city of Corinth, which formed a state by 
herself, and bid defiance to both sides of the isthmus. Tier 
" Acropolis " blocked the land to the south ; and the waves of 
the sea chafed at her feet, all around to the north. 

This short sketch of the smallest part of Greece — its south- 
ern peninsula — is sufficient for our purpose. The same might 
be done with respect to a similar geographico-historical dz- 
scription of Hellas. Thessaly, and its northernmost district, Ma- 
cedonia, would bring us to the same conclusion ; but it would 
scarcely render the picture more striking. Out of all, issues 
in unmistakable character, that " individualism" of which we 
spoke previously with regard to Home, quoting a remarkable 
passage of the " Antonins " of Mr. Franz de Champ agny. 
This last effect of the disintegration of religion amongst man- 
kind in antiquity, deserved more than a passing notice, since 



434 



GEISTTILISM. 



it is the last and invariable step of the downward progress of 
nations in their religious degeneracy, which it has been our 
chief object to demonstrate. Besides, as that " individualism," 
after producing the deplorable religions results which have 
been all along the main subject of our investigations, was like- 
wise the cause of national and civil disintegration, it was im- 
portant to consider this apart for a moment, and to show it as 
an outward symbol of a deep-seated and far worse interior evil. 
It was for this reason we adduced this single illustration of the 
whole subject. And that the more so, because it has become, 
likewise, the great bane of our age, and threatens really 
modem society with that social decomposition which would 
inevitably be our lot, as it was that of the nations of antiquity, 
if Christianity were not always in our midst to counteract the 
mighty evil. It was foretold by some profound thinkers at 
the very first outburst of Protestantism, and the terrible phan- 
tom at last stares us in the face, so that no one but one reso- 
lutely blind can fail to recognize its features. 

The " London "Westminster Review," if we may judge from 
its number of October, 1873, does not appear to share our 
horror of " individualism." They even consider it as a Mess- 
i?ig i and would deprecate the " cohesion " produced by " dog- 
matic teaching" as an obstacle, probably, to expansion of 
thought, and to the independence of the human mind. At 
last these gentlemen are consistent, and proclaim openly what 
their immediate predecessors would have shrunk from recog- 
nizing, that the result of "modern thought," as of "ancient 
polytheism," is to reduce mankind to " individuals," and to 
throw the minds of all into revolt and anarchy. Would to 
God that the mass of sensible people could perceive the ten- 
dency of this monstrous admission ! We observe likewise that 
the same " advanced thinkers " would not find it very reprehen- 
sible if open persecution was declared against such a retrograde 
body of men as the Catholic Church appears to be in their eyes. 



GREEK A5TD LATIN POETS. 



435 



They consent, however, to be generous enough to grant to the 
Church the " undeserved" advantage of a liberal "toleration." 
The Church ought certainly to be thankful for such magnani- 
mous forbearance. One reflexion, nevertheless, might open 
their eyes to see where true strength is to be found. As they pro- 
claim openly " individualism," in this number at least, if not in 
others, and thus confess they are reduced to it ; and as unnum- 
bered multitudes of the Catholic Church will always form one 
" body," owing to her " dogmatic teaching," the same Church 
will always be stronger than they are, abstracting even from 
the promises of her Founder. Her faith will never cease from 
among men, even though the number of members should be 
reduced to something less than her actual two hundred 
millions. Whilst the doctrine of the supporters of " indi- 
vidualism," from their own confession, and from the very 
nature of the principle they advocate, cannot ever be one ; 
must ever be multitudinous, inorganic, disorderly, and weak ; 
never agreeing with themselves, they must remain in the state 
of disconnected atoms. 



CHAPTER IX. 



SUPPLEMENTARY. 
I. 

All the nations that have hitherto passed in review before 
ns belong to the Aryan or Japhetic and to the Hamitic races. 
Some of these last, as the Phoenicians, and the whole Semitic 
branch of the human family, have been unnoticed, and contrib- 
uted nothing to our conclusion. In the absence of these, can 
we claim to have sustained our thesis? We think we can. 
Because if the history of the best known and most important 
portions of mankind completely demonstrates it, we may fairly 
infer that that of the less important and less known will do 
the same. Yet it will be good to say at least a word on the 
subject. We will, therefore, conclude our undertaking with a 
slight and brief investigation of what is known of this last- 
named branch of the human family. It must, necessarily, be 
only slight and brief, because the materials for investigation are 
scanty, and do not supply us with anything like the copious 
and varied materials afforded by the history of the descendants of 
Japhet and Ham. Yet we may, perhaps, discover some traces, 
even amongst the former, of a religion originally monotheistic 
and pure ; and evidence sufficient to support the high proba- 
bility of our general thesis, that amongst them, too, as well as 
amongst the other races, it was only in subsequent ages that it 
degenerated into the mass of corruption which we know sur- 
passed in hoiTor the foul dissoluteness of all other idolatries. 

The chief of these races are those which have dwelt from time 
immemorial in Mesopotamia, Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine, and 
(436> 



SUPPLEMENTARY. 



437 



Arabia. The presence of the posterity of Abraham — of the 
true " people of God," the depository of the old traditions, and 
the recipient of a new revelation, the most enlightened of all 
ancient nations in religions matters — in the midst of the most 
superstitious, idolatrous, and morally impure of all peoples of 
antiquity, will certainly surprise us, and furnish us with con- 
siderations of no common interest. 

It seems very probable that pantheism and idolatry prevailed 
among those tribes, before it did anywhere else. And from 
what the traditions of Asiatic nations tell us of I^imrod, so 
soon after the dispersion of mankind, the period of pure wor- 
ship, on the banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris, must have 
been of a short duration ; and thus our task becomes serious 
and difficult. Yet we do not think it is hopeless. 

It will assist the object we have in view, to consider briefly 
the mythology of those races and try to discover if there is 
any similarity or analogy between them ; as we found it to be 
the case between the Hindoos, the Baetrians, the Egyptians, 
and the Greeks. And here we are met at the outset with a 
striking fact, namely, that their polytheistic system — when 
they reached polytheism — appears to be copied from a common 
pattern, and must have come originally from the same source. 
The religion of the Chakkeans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Syrians, 
and Phoenicians, such as it was at the time of their splendor, 
had common traits which argued clearly the same origin. There 
exists a serious difficulty with regard to the primitive religion 
of the Arabians, of which we shall have to speak. Yet the 
few Arabic inscriptions which have been preserved from those 
ancient times, seem -to point to the same conclusion. 

The small influence which the pure and perfect monotheism 
of the Jews obtained over those anciently civilized, but ex- 
tremely corrupt, nations, must ever be a subject of wonder. Yet, 
we believe we shall be able to ascertain a real action of the 
kind more effective than is generally supposed. 



438 



GENTILISM. 



II. 

The most ancient of the Semitic peoples were certainly the 
Chaldasans, who, at least, were first thought to belong to 
the Semitic stock. Sir George Rawlinson, in his <; First Mon- 
narchy," has, we believe, sufficiently proved that they were 
Chushites, and consequently the posterity of Ham. Their race 
spread itself not only in Southern Mesopotamia, and around the 
head of the Persian Gulf, but also all through Southern Persia, 
as far as the Indus ; but the Empire of Chaldaea embraced only 
the countries along the Euphrates and the Tigris southward, 
and at the head of the Persian Gulf. Nimrod, the mighty 
hunter before the Lord, was the founder of this monarchy, and 
the first of the Babylonian kings. This goes back to the 23d 
or 24th century before Christ, and history does not penetrate 
further. A large empire was thus early founded; and it must 
have been on the ruins of clans. Consequently, neither in 
Southern Mesopotamia, in Assyria, nor even in Syria and Phoe- 
nicia, do we see, in the highest antiquity, the primitive simple 
manners of septs and tribes ; and this constitutes an exception 
to the history of all other ancient countries. Yet to protest, as 
it were, against the establishment of a cruel despotism, patri- 
archal manners remained firmly rooted amongst the posterity of 
Abraham in Palestine, a great part of south-western Chaldaea 
proper, and in the whole immense peninsula of Arabia, where 
it still prevails. 

But, apart from these general considerations, we must ex- 
amine briefly the primitive Chaldjean religion. 

Sir George Rawlinson says (page 110, and see. 9), that 
" From the earliest times to which the monuments carry us 
back, it was, in its outward aspect, a polytheism of a very elabo- 
rate character." But he tells us likewise that " the subject is 
but partially worked out by cuneiform scholars ; the difficulties 



SUPPLEMEjSTTAKY. 



439 



in the way of understanding it are great ; and in many portions 
to which special attention has been paid, it is strangely per- 
plexing and bewildering." The meaning evidently is that the 
" polytheism " itself is extremely obscure, and nothing certain 
can yet be said of it. 

But, in coming to page 112, the same learned writer begins 
the grouping of the principal Chaldsean deities as follows : " At 
tbe head of the Pantheon stands a god, II or Ra, of whom but 
little is known." Then Mr. Rawlinson enumerates Triad after 
Triad " better known," we suppose, because the Supreme God 
having been early forgotten and set aside, the false gods set up 
in His place became in course of time the only divinities of the 
nation who consequently knew them alone. 

The important question for us, therafore, is to consider who 
is that II or Ra ? And we are prompted to ask it precisely 
because He is "little known." We must first discard the name 
Ra, for this very reason, that Sir G. Rawlinson (page 111) 
states " that it represents probably the native Chaldsean name 
of this deity, while II is the Semitic equivalent. The Chal- 
dseans were not Semites — the very erudite author of the " Five 
Monarchies " is fully persuaded of it — yet, on their monuments 
the name of their first god is U (a Semitic expression), as often 
surely, and perhaps oftener — we have no means of ascertain- 
ing it— than Ra, the Chaldgean word. What does it mean ? In 
our opinion this surely : that the idolatrous Chushites of Chal- 
daea had retained a single golden thread of the primitive tradi- 
tions better preserved by their brethren of the Semitic race, 
and this thread was the true name of God, to which they tried 
to find an equivalent in their language, and so they called Him 
Ra. But for us, as we said previously, the word 11 is of ex- 
treme importance, and we shall soon be convinced of it. 

" II, of course," says Rawlinson, " is but a variant of El, 
the root of the well-known Biblical Elohim, as well as of the 
Arabic Allah. It is this name which Diodorus represents 



440 



GENTILISM. 



under the form of Elus ('HXog), and Sanchoniaton, or rather 
Philo-Byblius, under that of Ilus (7Aof). The meaning of the 
word is simply ' God,' or, perhaps, ' the god ' emphatically. 
Ha, the Chnshite equivalent, must be considered to have had 

the same force originally It formed an element in the 

native name of Babylon, which was Kcnra, the Chushite equiv- 
alent of the Semitic jBab-U,.&Tn expression signifying 'the gate 
of God.' " 

In these few words, Sir G. Rawlinson has satisfactorily 
proved that, originally, the Ckaldseans were monotheists ; and 
as he is certainly an unexceptionable witness, we rest satisfied 
with his testimony, and pass on. For we do not intend to en- 
ter into an examination of the abominable naturalism which 
soon became prevalent at Babylon, although it would be a 
striking example of a rapid degeneracy, more rapid certainly 
than among any other people of antiquity. 

The next nation coming under our observation is the As- 
syrian, comprised likewise in the Chaldaean Empire, having a 
mythology in appearance somewhat different from that of 
Chaldsea, yet, in fact, almost identical. Mr. F. Lenormant 
("Ancient History of the East," torn, i., p. 462) will tell us in a 
few words in what it consisted : " The skilful explorations of 
the last twenty-five years in the countries bordering on the 
Tigris and Euphrates, have given us much more correct ideas 
on the subject of the Assyro-Babylonian mythology than had 
been handed down by the Greeks. Nevertheless many points 
still remain in obscurity as to the religion common, with a few 
exceptions, to the two great Semitic cities of Mesopotamia. 
.... When we penetrate beneath the surface of gross polythe- 
ism it had acquired from popular superstition, and revert to 
the original and higher conceptions, we shall find the whole 
based on the idea of the unity of the Deity, the last relic of 
the primitive revelation, disfigured by and lost in the mon- 
strous ideas of pantheism 



SUPPLEMENT AET. 



441 



" The Supreme God, the first and sole principle from whom 
all other deities were derived, was Ilu, whose name signifies 
God by excellence. Their idea of Him was too comprehensive, 
too vast, to have any determined, external form, or, conse- 
quently, to receive in general the adoration of the people 

At Nineveh, and generally throughout Assyria, He received 
the peculiar national name of Asshur (whence was derived the 
name of the country, Mat Asshur) ; and this itself seems 
derived from the Aryan name of the Supreme Deity, Asura. 
With this title He was the great God of the land, the especial 
protector of the Assyrians, and gave victory to their arms. 
The inscriptions designate Him as ' Master, or Chief of the 
Gods.' " 

Mr. F. Lenormant may be mistaken _in the derivation of 
the name. That of the Supreme God in Central Asia was 
Ahura, not Asura, although we think that occasionally Asura 
is used. But what is fatal to such a derivation, is that there is 
Ashur, or Assur, a man certainly who, according to Genesis 
(x. 11), " gedificavit Niniven, et plateas civitatis, et Chale." 
But whatever may have been the real derivation of the word 
Asshur, its identification with Ilu or II, the Supreme God of 
the Chaldseans, -appears certain. The two mythologies of 
Chaldsea and Assyria were almost identical ; they were com- 
posed of the same Triads almost, and each Triad originated 
almost identical deities, etc. ; the starting-point of the two sys- 
tems must have been the same, and thus Asshur was certainly 
the same as 11. 

Hawlinson admits that " each of the systems .... com- 
mences with the same pre-eminence of a single deity ; which 
is followed by the same groupings of identically the same 
divinities ; and, after that, by a multitudinous polytheism, 
which is chiefly of a local character." 

According to the same distinguished author, the usual 
titles of Asshur are " the great Lord," " the King of all the 



442 



GENTILISM. 



Gods," He who rules supreme over the Gods." .... " His 

place is always first in invocations He places the mon- 

archs upon their thrones, etc., etc." We wonder, after this, 
at his assertion that this religious system was " without any 
real monotheism." We wonder particularly at the reason he 
gives for it in a note. " Though II in Chaldsea," he says, 
" and Asshur in Assyria, were respectively chief gods ; they 
were in no sense sole gods. ISTot only are the other deities 
viewed as really distinct beings, but they are, in many 
cases, self-originated, and always supreme in their several 
spheres." 

This certainly was the case in after ages, subsequently to the 
corruption of the primitive religion. Eut the immense dis- 
tance which always in Chaldaea and Assyria separated II and 
Asshur on one side, from the gods on the other, shows that 
evidently, in primitive times, these were far inferior gods ; not 
self-originated, but created ; not supreme, but delegated, a3 our 
Angels and Archangels. Their distinctness from the Supreme 
Being, recognized by Eawlinson, proves, at least, that there 
was originally no pantheism ; and thus the very words of the 
author of the " Five Monarchies " are so many proofs of our 
conclusions. 

Passing on to Phoenicia and Palestine, inhabited originally 
by the Canaanites, and remembering that both peoples belonged 
to the same race and were Hamites, we are struck by the 
remarkable fact that their religion — which was, perhaps, tha 
most corrupt and barbarous of all ancient religions — had evi- 
dently a monotheistic origin, even more clearly than that of 
Chaldaea and Assyria. For besides Moloch, and Baal, and the 
other demons to whom they sacrificed human beings with the 
most atrocious rites, they admitted, over and far above these 
infernal deities, a Superior Being, called by them some- 
times El, " the God," and occasionally Iaoh, " the being," 
" the eternal ; " both names absolutely the same with those of 



SUPPLEMENTARY. 



443. 



Elohim and Jehovah, the God of the Bible, the true and 
supreme God of Jews and Christians. 

It is true that, according to Mr. F. Lenormant, these two 
appellations " were of a mysterious character, and rarely used ; 
the usual name, and the one generally employed was Baal, 
' the lord.' " But this mystery about the name of the true God 
was a universal fact among all other nations of antiquity ; and 
we know that the Jews themselves never dared to pronounce 
the " ineffable " name, " Jehovah." 

There is only a word to add on Arabia and the Arabs, whose 
real religion in ancient times has been, until our days, almost en- 
tirely unknown. Few researches have yet been made to throw 
light on the subject, on account of the almost absolute impossibili- 
ty of penetrating the country, and the entire absence of monu- 
ments, except in the mountains of the north bordering on 
Syria and Mesopotamia. The late investigations of Comte de 
Vogue, however, have first, now in our own days, begun to 
penetrate the thick darkness which obscures the religious state 
of this country in ancient times ; and all the discoveries made 
so far establish an almost literal identity of it with Syria and 
Chaldsea. This seems to be true, not only of Arabia Petrsea, 
but even of the Hedjaz and Yemen. Al or El in Arabia Pe- 
trasa, Allah in Hedjaz, and Uu or II in Yemen, was, in the 
highest antiquity that we can reach, the name of God in the 
three great divisions of the peninsula ; and in many parts of it 
the religious polytheist system which followed the first mono- 
theistic epoch, bears a, close analogy with that of Chaldrea and 
Syria. This short sketch must suffice in the incipient stage of 
our knowledge on the subject. But the testimony of all those 
countries is so alike, indeed unanimous, that it is not possible 
that subsequent discoveries should change substantially the 
result. It is more probable that they will serve only to confirm 
the previous conclusions, and carry them finally to a complete 
demonstration. 



444 



GETSTTILISM. 



After this compendious account of the primitive religion of 
all the countries we now examine, and which form so distinct 
a group, different in appearance from that of Aryan nations, 
yet identical in the conclusions resulting from it, we shall be 
better able to appreciate the observations of Max Miiller 
on the same subject, as they are given in his " Lectures on the 
Science of Religion." 

" The Semitic languages, like the Aryan, possess a number of 
names of the Deity in common." Mr. Miiller, we think, classi- 
fies the Phoenicians with the Semites — " which must have 
existed before the Southern or Arabic, the Northern or Ara- 
maic, the Middle or Hebraic branches became permanently 
separated, and which, therefore, allow us an insight into the 
religious conceptions of the once united Semitic race, long be- 
fore Jehovah was worshipped by Abraham, or Baal was invok- 
ed in Phoenicia, or Bel in Babylon." Then follows a long 
dissertation on those various names of God, which Mr. Miiller 
concludes in these words : " Whether we include or exclude 
the name of Jehovah " — we do positively exclude it for the 
present — " we have, I think, sufficient witnesses to establish 
what we wished to establish, namely, that there was a period 
during which the ancestors of the Semitic family had not yet 
been divided, whether in language or in religion. That period 
transcends the recollection of every one of the Semitic races 
in the same way as neither Hindoos, Greeks, nor Romans have 
any recollection of the time when they spoke a common lan- 
guage, and worshipped their Father in heaven by a name that 
was as yet neither Sanscrit, nor Greek, nor Latin. But I do 
not hesitate to call this prehistoric period historical in the best 
sense of the word. It was a real period, because unless it was 
real, all the realities of the Semitic languages, and the Semitic 
religions, such as we find them after their separation, would be 
unintelligible. Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic point to a common 
source, as much as Sanscrit, Greek, and Latin ; and unless we 



SITPPLEMENTAKY. 



445 



can bring ourselves to doubt that the Hindoos, the Greeks, the 
Romans, and the Teutons derived the' worship of their prin- 
cipal deity from their common Aryan sanctuary, we shall not 
be able to deny that there was likewise a primitive religion of 
the whole Semitic race, and that El, ' the strong one in Heaven,' 
was invoked by the ancestors of all the Semitic races, before 
there were Babylonians in Babylon, Phoenicians in Sidon and 
Tyre, before there were Jews in Mesopotamia or Jerusalem. 
The evidence of the Semitic is the same as that of the Aryan 
languages ; the conclusion cannot be different." The deduction 
from all these considerations is clear, and no further discovery 
can shake it. 

III. 

But we have excluded the Hebrew evidence for several 
strong reasons. First, it is an evidence quite apart from all 
the othei s ; it stands by itself ; inasmuch as that people were, 
throaghout their history, under the direct action of divine 
Providence, who guided them, chastised them, or rewarded 
them; governed them, in short, as their king and ruler. The 
Jewish people, consequently, can be compared to no other. 
Their national history has a special significance of its own ; 
and remains always far above as it is essentially different from 
all other facts of history. 

Secondly, it looks like desecration to rank the Mosaic relig- 
ion amongst the other cults of antiquity, because they all soon 
became so corrupt as to provoke the abhorrence of every one 
of only decent propriety of morals. Especially is this true of 
those of Chaldfea, Syria, and Phoenicia, whose degrading rites 
must be ascribed to the direct influence of the Evil one. To 
state, without a clear explanation, that the God of the Jews 
was the same, originally, as the god of the Tyrians, might lead 
the unwary to imagine that all religions are alike, and deserve 



446 



GENTILISM. 



the like commendation from all. Nothing could be further 
from the thought of a Christian. 

Thirdly, the constant distinctness of the pure monotheistic 
idea among the Jews, during so many ages of their national 
existence, was positively intended by Almighty God as a per- 
manent protest against the corrupt worship and abominable 
rites of all the surrounding nations, sunk, during all that time, 
in the mire of a devilish idolatry ; and we have the whole of 
the Old Testament for vouchers of this assertion. 

It is proper, therefore, to consider alone, and apart from all 
other religions, the grand individuality of the Mosaic theology, 
at least with respect to the belief in one (rod, as the typical 
form which all cults would have assumed if they had not de- 
viated from their original purity ; and these considerations will 
appropriately close our protracted investigations on the subject 
of Gentilism. 

And first, the name given to Almighty God in the Bible is 
the most exact, the least subject to false interpretations, the 
completest in every respect, that can be imagined ; we mean 
the tetragrammaton. It is true that, besides this ineffable 
name, there were, according to St. Jerome (Epist. 136, ad Mar- 
cellarn), quoted by Corn, a Lapide (Ex. vi.,) ten other appella- 
tions to denominate God. And it is remarkable that those 
various names of the Deity never became, among the Jews, an 
occasion of idolatry, as was certainly the case among other 
nations, whose polytheism was often the result of the different 
terms used to express their idea of the divine nature. The 
reason was probably the pre-eminence in Judea of that other 
name which the Israelites knew expressed most perfectly the 
essence of the Deity. Numbers of dissertations have been writ- 
ten on it. We will merely refer to two involved in them : The 
four letters composing it SLYejod, he, vau, and jod. Many see in 
their combination the meaning of the latin words : Qui erat, est, 
et erit ; and among other reasons, bring forward the passage 



SUPPLEMENTAEY. 



447 



of the Apocalypse, where God is said to be : Qui erat, qui est, 
et qui venturus est. We know that in Hindostan and Egypt 
the knowledge of this attribute of the Supreme Being led the 
people to believe that not only He included in His essence all 
times, but likewise all things; and thus it became a fertile 
cause of pantheism among them. Yet, as believed in by the 
Jews, nothing of the kind ever happened. Even this meaning, 
therefore, proved harmless in Judea. But the greatest number 
of Catholic exegetists understand the tetragrammaton, very dif- 
ferently. Cornelius a Lapide, who refers to them at length (in 
Exodum), and likewise (in Apoealypsim) shows that the real 
meaning is simply Qui est, indicating the self-existence of 
God, and showing Him to be the First Cause of all things ; and 
he concludes a long dissertation by these remarkable words : 
" Dico hoc nomen tetragrammaton Jeheva " — thus he spells it 
— " significare essentiam Dei, ipsam que essentias divines abys- 
sum, et pelagus immensum ; hoc enim significat nomen qui est." 
In a second place, it is easy to prove that from this name of 
God all the divine attributes strictly follow. The unity of es- 
sence is certainly included in it, since the reality of being be- 
longing only to God, if a second God, different from the first, 
possessed it, the other could not be said to have it entire, and 
consequently in a god-like manner, that is to say, to have it at 
all. It follows likewise, from it, that God must be all-perfect, 
most simple, infinite, independent, immutable, eternal, omnipo- 
tent, the Cause of all things which exist, which shall exist, 
which are possible, *etc, etc. Never any name so comprehen- 
sive, exact, complete, has been given to the Supreme Being by 
the religious belief of any other people. 

But among the Jews the unity of God was especially insisted 
on, because, wben once its sacredness was in the least infringed 
upon, immediately the flood of polytheism, to which all nations 
were so powerfully inclined, broke through and brought with 

it the most devastating errors and delusions. Thus it was not 
30 



448 



GENTILISM. 



only this divine name which kept tli3 Jews from idolatry, hut 
also to render its effect more sure, the great and terrible voice 
heard from Mount Sinai proclaiming the divine law, amidst 
thunder and lightning : " Non habebis deos alienos coram me. 
JVon facies tibi sculptile .... JVbn adorabis ea neque coles : 
Ego mm Dominus tuus fortis, Zelotes, etc.' 1 '' 

Thus was polytheism most effectually warded off. But 
how is it that the Jews, so often inclined to pure idolatry, never 
showed the least tendency to pantheism, which was everywhere 
else the beginning of error ? The reason is plain : From the 
very first page of their sacred books, and from so many utter- 
ances of their prophets and wise men, they knew that He was 
the Creator in the very sense we attach to the word. The 
error of emanation could not occur even to their mind, after 
having been distinctly* taught how the visible world had come 
into existence. It was not in a state of unconsciousness, and 
during sleep, that the author of all things had generated the 
exterior world, as the writers of the Vedas and of the Hermetic 
books had dreamed. It was in all the majesty of the Godhead 
that He had uttered His great Fiat / and His creation, although 
immense, brilliant, apparently without limits, was to remain 
for ever not only distinct from, but infinitely below, Him. 

We begin already to understand how the monotheism of the 
Jews differed from that of the Hindoos and the Egyptians. 
How much more profoundly would this phenomenon impress 
us could we go through all the effusions of the truly inspired 
writers of that sublime book we call tlj£ Bible. Could we 
bring forward all the texts in which the holiness of the Lord 
is proclaimed, together with His providence, His love for man, 
requiring love in return ; and asking in positive terms to be 
loved by His intelligent creatures ! The guardianship of the 
dogmas was thus given over to the sacredness of love ; and man 
felt the necessity of never deviating from truth in his worship, 
precisely because he was bound to love H'm, and could not des- 



SUPPLEMENTARY. 



449 



pise the One he loved, by communicating His attributes to any 
other. "Diliges Domvthum Deum tuum ex toto corde ttw, et 
ex iota anima tua, et ex tota fortitudine tua " (Deut. vi., 5). 
No other religious code ever spoke with that plainness and 
pointedness ; although St. Clement of Alexandria thought the 
Egyptians were enjoined the same kind of worship through 
love, and expressed it by giving to the Sphinx the face of a 
woman. Supposing his interpretation true — which in our 
opinion is very problematical — is it possible to place both proc- 
lamations of the same divine law on the same footing ? Yet 
the Mosaic dispensation was designed rather to inspire fear than 
promote love. And this is chiefly visible in the thirty-second 
chapter of Deuteronomy, which is full of threats, and foretells 
to the Jewish people the most fearful evils as the punishment 
of any future rebellion and idolatry. In the same chapter, 
however, what a picture of the tender predilection of God for 
his " people !" "Invenit eum in terra deserta, in loco horroris 
et vastce solitudinis : circumduxit eum et docuit j et custodivit 
quasi pupillam oculi sui. Sicut aquila provooans ad volaiv- 
dum pullos suos, et super eos volitans, expandit alas suas> et' 
assumpsit eum, atque portavit in humeris suis, Dorninus solus 
dux ejus fuit, et non erat cum eo Deus aliemis." These were 
the noble and love-breathing ideas which the true religion gave 
to the Jews of the God they were to worship. The sublime 
mission of Moses in announcing them, proclaiming them, and 
giving them their sanction, shows itself infinitely superior to 
the self-imposed task of those Hindoo rishis, the authors of the 
finest upanishads of the Yedas. This fact alone affords confirm- 
atory evidence that his authority could only have been de- 
rived but from God. It is this which places the Hebrew mo- 
notheism far above the purest belief of other nations, unless 
we go back to their very origin, of which we have no certain 
record, when they received it from God himself speaking to 
Noah and his children. 



450 



GENTILISM. 



But it is time we should try to discover the influence of this 
sublime doctrine on surrounding nations. This requires of us 
to examine the relations the Jews had ; 1st. With the great 
nations of antiquity; 2d. With their immediate neighbors in 
Palestine and Syria ; and we shall find that this influence was 
far greater than is generally imagined. 

I. It is remarkable that, throughout the time of their long his- 
tory, the Jews had intimate relations with the various peoples 
who had successfully swayed the destinies of mankind, namely, 
with the Assyrians and Chaldeans, the Egyptians, the Persians, 
the Greeks, and the Romans ; relations of social and religious 
intercourse, of war, of alliances, of commerce even and inter- 
change of commodities. Of no other nation of antiquity can 
the same be said to the same extent. In the Old Testament 
we see all these complications of interests between Israel and 
the Gentiles brought forward, sometimes mentioned briefly, 
occasionally with many details. This testimony of Holy Scrip- 
ture has often been derided, and the " people of God " have 
been contemptuoiisly represented as an insignificant, rude, and 
almost barbarous tribe. It has, however, been amply vindi- 
cated, in these days of inquiry, by the learned men who have 
studied deeply the antiquities of Assyria, Chaldsea, Egypt, Per- 
sia, Greece, and Rome. The Jews cannot be any more treated 
with ridicule, and their sacred books ignored or disowned, after 
the labors of so many interpreters of cuneiform inscriptions, 
and hieroglyphic or demotic papyri as well as of classical 
writers. 

But, at first sight, it seems that this long-continued inter- 
course of the Israelites with the various Gentile empires or re- 
publics, had very little influence on the religious thoughts of 
these foreign nations. The universal flood of idolatry and 
superstition does not seem to have been checked in the least by all 
the sublime truths revealed in the books of the Old Testament. 
We do not hear of a single village having renounced its gods, 



SUPPLEMENTARY. 



451 



to embrace the worship of the Supreme and Sole God of 
the Jews. When Naaman, the Syrian, converted by his mira- 
culous cure, embraced Judaism and became a proselyte, he did 
not appear to hope that he could bring any of his nation to the 
same belief ; and he merely asked of the prophet, if he could 
in conscience accompany his master to an idolatrous temple, 
whenever requested to do so as a requirement of his office. 
When the Moabite Ruth consented to renounce Chamos of 
Moab, to adore the God of Noemi, she did not speak of trying 
to bring to her new religion any of her former friends and fel- 
low-idolaters. 

Yet we cannot suppose that the presence of the Jews in the 
midst of so many Gentile peoples, during so many ages, had no 
influence whatever in checking idolatry, and inspiring many 
men with the thought of a holier belief and a purer morality. 
We might take, for example, at the very outset, the instance 
of the patriarch of the nation, Abraham, and show what in- 
fluence he must have had not only in Chaldfea, where he was 
born, not only in Mesopotamia, where he spent the greatest 
part of his life, but likewise in Egypt, where he travelled, and 
became intimately acquainted with the Pharaoh himself. Much 
might be written on the wonderful story of Joseph in Egypt. 
But a most remarkable fact, long subsequent to Abraham, is 
sufficient to correct in our minds many false ideas on the sub- 
ject under consideration. It is the preaching of Jonah in 
Nineveh. The whole of this strange narrative looks, indeed, 
like a primitive example of any successful mission by a Catholic 1 
apostle even in our modem times. Does not Jonah among 
the Ninevites appear like a Francis Xavier in Marava or in 
Japan ? And can we imagine that it was an altogether ex- 
ceptional case, never repeated by any other prophet or man 
of God ? The Old Bible does no more contain everything that 
happened in those times, than the New Testament relates all 
the events of the life of our Lord. » 



452 



GENTILISM. 



•The Assyrian captivity of the Samaritans under Salmanasar, 
is another fact on which men do not sufficiently reflect. The 
kingdom of Israel, it is true, was already in great part idol- 
atrous ; yet many families preserved faithfully the true wor- 
ship of God ; and all, without exception, maintained a due 
respect for the Pentateuch, which certainly they carried with 
them to Assyria and Media. The simple, idyllic, and so truth- 
ful history of Tobias shows us that the zeal for the spread of 
the true religion among infidels had not altogether died out. 
The words of the holy man are clear (Tob. xiii. 4) : " Dispersit 
vos {Deus) inter gentes, quos ignorant eum, ut vos enarretis 
mirabilia ejus, etfaciatis scire eos, quia non est alius Deus om- 
nipotens prceter eum.'" What Tobias hifnself thought, must 
have likewise been impressed on the minds of many of his 
countrymen, of all pious people, in fact. And can we calcu- 
late the effect of so many words of instruction and exhorta- 
tion on the pagans of Northern Mesopotamia and Armenia ? 

But we see this more clearly still in the Babylonish captiv- 
ity ; when not Samaritans only, men of the ten separated 
tribes, but true Jews of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, 
were transferred to Babylon and the neighborhood of the 
Persian Gidf. We should have to quote many prophecies of 
Ezechiel and all the history of Daniel, and allude, at least, to 
the position he occupied in the palace of the king, to give the 
reader some idea of the influence he must have exerted on the 
corrupt worship and the most corrupt manners of the Baby- 
lonians. He could not, certainly, prevent the catastrophe im- 
pending on the dynasties of the second Chaldaean Empire. It 
cannot be believed, however, that such a powerful interpreter 
of the oracles of God as Daniel certainly .was, did not produce 
any impression on the idolaters of Babylon, since they believed 
so implicitly his interpretations, even when contrary to all 
their interests and hopes. 

But it is chiefly under the Persian dynasty which immedi- 



SUPPLEMENTAEY. 



453 



ately succeeded, that the religious aud moral influence of the 
Jews appears pre-eminent. Cyrus' edict for their return to 
Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the temple, is the most 
remarkable proof of it. Why is it that not only the great 
founder of the Persian Empire, but all his immediate successors, 
furnished pecuniary and military aid for the restoration of 
the great edifice, erected from the beginning, and continuing 
through ages as a proclamation to the whole world of the 
existence of One only God, worshipped in one only place, and 
by unique rites and sacrifices ? In all the other countries 
which the Persian armies either annexed to Iran or devastated 
and ravaged, their first care was to wage war on religion, to 
disperse the priesthoods, burn the temples, and break to pieces 
the idols. This Cambyses did in Egypt and Xerxes in Greece. 
In Jerusalem alone did they show their respect for the God 
worshipped within its walls. They inaugurated the great cus- 
tom continued afterwards under all the political powers on 
which Judea depended ; for after the Persians, the Macedoni- 
ans, under the leadership of Alexander, the Greek successors of 
the youthful hero, the Romans even afterwards appropriated a 
yearly tribute to the ceremonies and sacrifices appointed by the 
Mosaic law for the service of the true God. Some Syrian 
tyrants alone, like Antiochus, not only refused the tribute, but 
proscribed the worship, closed or injured the edifices, and per- 
secuted the nation. "With this single exception, it is a very 
strange, yet absolutely undeniable, fact, that, from the family 
of the Achemenidse down to Pompey, and, later, Titus, all the 
various political powers holding Palestine under their sway 
followed the practice introduced by the Persian kings, and 
wished that the true God should be invoked in their behalf 
every day, morning and evening, by sacrifice and prayer. Can 
a stronger proof be given that the true and only revealed 
religion of antiquity possessed a great moral influence over the 
pagan mind of the period ? 



454 



GEINTTILISM. 



JBut this is not all. "Whatever may have been the circum- 
stances which brought about the translation of the Holy Scrip- 
tures in Greek, it is certain that the Septuagint version existed 
from the fourth century before Christ, since the most probable 
opinion, supported by St. Clement of Alexandria, attributes it 
to the care of Ptolemy Lagus, the first king of Egypt after 
Alexander. The translation was intended for the library of 
Alexandria, which then became, we may say, the intellectual 
centre of the world. The revealed word of God, containing 
the principles of the true religion, together with the annals of 
mankind, and the private records of the Jewish nation, then 
became accessible to all, as they were no more hidden under 
the Hebrew, text, which so few could read, but were exposed 
to the knowledge of all in the Hellenic idiom, the most uni- 
versally spread at the time, and intelligible from the Atlantic 
Ocean to the confines of India. Printing, it is true, could not 
multiply the copies, yet we know how extensively manuscripts 
circulated among educated people. 

We have alluded to only a few well-known facts, in order to 
show that the Hebrew monotheism must have exerted a power- 
ful influence all over the ancient world. We have not been 
able to more than touch upon a subject which, fully developed, 
would be full of interest. It remains to make a few remarks 
on the more direct action of the true religion on the people 
immediately surrounding the Jews in Palestine. 

II. It is a truth, as curious as sad, that the Semitic race, 
which was not alone to keep the truth, and worship the only 
God, but to give, in fact, the Saviour to mankind, went almost 
altogether astray in the matters of religion and morality, and 
exhibited the greatest debasement in worship, and the blindest 
superstition in manners and customs. Many branches of that 
great race, for which chiefly the Old Testament was written, 
were, from a very early age, addicted to all the vices naturally 
fostered by the most direful errors. We cannot penetrate the 



SUPPLEMENTARY. 



455 



special designs of Providence in placing the Jews in the midst 
of Phoenicians, Canaanites, and Syrians, all of them, at the 
time, worshipping, in fact, the Satanic powers under the name 
of gods and goddesses, and given over to the most brutalizing 
immorality and superstition. The more the details of that 
abominable worship are studied and become known through 
the deep researches of orientalists in our days, the more we 
cease to wonder at the mission clearly given to the Israelites 
in the Pentateuch, to destroy, them if they refused to give up 
their idolatry, and to occupy a territory long before promised 
to Abraham. We see the straggle fully described in the Book 
of Judges and in the first of Kings. The sure key to the 
proper understanding of this part of Holy Scripture is the com- 
parison between the gloomy idolatry of the Canaanites, and the 
purity of the Mosaic religious law which was to replace it in 
Palestine. The Israelites are always defeated when they forget 
the admonitions of the divine law, and always successful when 
they return to it. The Canaanites are their enemies because 
they are, by their idolatry, the enemies of the Lord. It is 
throughout a religious conflict between the worship of One 
true God and the impious rites of barbarous divinities. 

But after this protracted straggle, after the short reign of 
Saul, the first Jewish king, comes the long one of David, who, 
by many battles and nearly as many victories, conquered peace 
at last, and restored to his nation the possession of a land given 
first to Abraham, pointed out by Moses, conquered at first by 
Joshua, but, after this first of the Judges, disputed a long time 
by many idolatrous nations, until it was at last, as we have said, 
conquered by David, who at length bestowed the peaceful pos- 
session of it on his people. But how ? If we look to the mere 
narrative of events, David is simply a skilful and successful 
general, who gains his kingly crown by the greatness of his 
mind and the strength of his arm. But should we stop at this 
interpretation of his powerful individuality, we should not truly 



456 



GENTILISM. 



understand it. The key to his history and to that of his people 
is contained in his Psalms. And what do those sublime pro- 
ductions proclaim \ The greatness of God and the utter de- 
pravity of polytheism. It was impossible to denounce with 
more power the abominable rites celebrated all around him ; 
impossible to assert more forcibly the success of God against 
Satan in his own victories. With justice and conscious un- 
worthiness he exclaimed : " Non nobis, Domine, non nobis ; 
sed nomini tuo da gloriam." 

But it is a fact that, when he wrote his psalms, and had them 
chanted before the tabernacle by thousands of human voices, 
the language in which they were written was not intelligible to 
his people alone, but to all those very tribes which he had con- 
quered, over which he had triumphed. Could a better way 
have been devised of impressing them with the glory of the 
God of Israel ? How many idolaters were converted by those 
sublime hymns, we have no means of ascertaining. But to 
suppose that they converted nobody, and that the surrounding 
idolatry was not influenced for good by the circulation of those 
divine melodies, woidd be to misunderstand altogether human 
nature. Especially when under the son and successor of 
David, the magnificent Temple of the true God rose on the 
hill of Sion, when, under its majestic architecture, the noble 
rites of the only true worship of the Deity performed on earth 
were consummated in the presence of so many Gentiles, to 
whom an extensive area inside of the building was assigned, 
who will be bold enough to say that no previous worshipper of 
Baal, no adorer of Melitta, no sacrificer to Astaroth, was im- 
pressed so as to surrender his superstition, and proclaim himself 
a true proselyte of the divine law promulgated on mount Sinai, 
and given to Moses with such awful solemnity ? 

But besides the conversion of many individuals, there can be 
no doubt that the degradation of polytheism, such as it was 
practised previously in Palestine, was arrested by the presence 



SUPPLEMENTARY. 



457 



of the faithful Israelites 'in the midst of the country, and in- 
stead of sinking deeper, and deeper, and deeper, as it did in 
other parts of the world, in Hindostan, in Egypt, in Greece, 
the Syrian superstitions were in a great measure mitigated and 
modified by the near presence of the Holy of Holies, and the 
constant spectacle of the solemn ceremonies of a pure worship. 

Palestine, it is true, whatever may be the cause of it, has 
always been a hot-bed of errors, and a gloomy field of contend- 
ing superstitions or heresies. It is so even in our time ; and 
there is scarcely a spot on earth where, at this moment, may be 
seen more contention and strife in religious matters. The 
august presence of the only true Temple of God, in former 
ages was, and the moving spectacle of the sepulchre of our 
Lord, in our times, still is, unable to produce harmony among 
men, and bring all to be of one mind and one heart. Yet, 
since our present investigations have been limited to a long- 
past epoch, what has been urged will, we trust, go far towards 
convincing the reader that the Mosaic monotheism must have 
not been without a great influence on the surrounding errors. 

It is true, therefore, that divine Providence always left to 
former pagan nations many means of acknowledging the Su- 
preme God, and of coming back to Him, after having so long 
wandered in the labyrinth of false religions. And the Mosaic 
law, given only to a small nation, was thus able to serve to 
many as a means of reflection and salvation. We do 
not speak here of its typical character, so remarkable certainly, 
and so well calculated to satisfy all the cravings of the heart 
for a future restoration of true religion upon earth ; cravings and 
anticipations which we know did exist, and to which many myths, 
poems, legends, or real prophecies bear witness. Our subject 
did not admit of our touching, even, on that most interesting 
topic. But the little we have said on the monotheism of the 
Jews was absolutely required in treating of what was real in the 
monotheism of the Gentiles. 



458 



GENTILISM. 



IV. 

The early documents of the Semitic, as well as of the Aryan 
races, have been proved to agree in representing mankind at 
first civilized, monotheistic, and morally pure. If the annals 
of the posterity of Sem are not so abundant and decisive as 
those of the children of Japhet, they have on the other side a 
superiority over these, by embracing within their ethnologic 
precincts the .wonderful posterity of Abraham. With respect 
to the Hebrew people, there can be no hesitation, no possible 
contradiction. The patriarchal system is evidently the origin 
of their social state ; the belief in one God is emphatically 
their creed ; the morality they professed was contained in the 
decalogue, which has always been justly considered as the clear 
and 'undisturbed source of the purest ethical codes ever 
adopted. If the other branches of the Semitic family offer us 
in their subsequent history the very reverse of this picture : 
despotism in society, rank idolatry in religion, debasement in 
moral principles — it could not have been so at the origin, since 
they had enjoyed the privilege of claiming the same ancestral 
patriarchs as those of the Hebrew people, the same belief in 
one God, the same pure law certainly anterior to that of Mount 
Sinai. 

But it seems that, after all, our demonstration is not com- 
plete. There is that great, universal, primeval Turanian race, * 
of which not a word has been said, and to which, nevertheless, 
must be awarded the priority in human history. Is it not in 
that wonderful ^Kvdionoq, so celebrated among the most reliable 
writers of ancient Asiatic history, that we will find that archaic 
barbarism which all modern researches bring forward as the 
first state of man on earth ? The spread of that degraded 
family of races, as extensive as the globe itself, the uncouth 
manners, so emphatically expressed in the very word okvQi<j[i6s, 



SUPPLEMENTARY. 



459 



the total absence of any religious emblems among tbe scattered 
relics which remain to us of that far-distant age ; everything, 
in fact, seems to proclaim that mankind did not begin by the 
golden age, but, on the contrary, by an undoubtful inferiority 
and debasement. 

It is, in fact, surprising that the earnest advocates of early 
barbarism have not yet entoned a psean of triumph on the oc- 
casion of the late discoveries in this field of ethnology. It is 
already more than forty years ago that Dr. Prichard showed 
the wide-spread existence of what he called the "Allophylian 
races." Several modern ethnologists of high renown have 
studied this question, in which they saw the germ of great and 
interesting findings. Geo.. Rawlinson, among others, has, in a 
few solid pages, brought to bear an immense erudition on the 
subject. All the great leaders in true science are agreed that 
the Allophylian, or Turanian, or Hamitic family of nations 
spread anteriorly to the Semitic or Aryan branches of man- 
kind, and were of a type far inferior to the more favored races 
which followed them. Yet nothing has been said of this by 
those modern authors who are all along taking advantage of 
the least important items of information tending to prove that 
man was at first a brute. Nay, more, if these same writers 
speak of it, it is with a marked diffidence, as did lately some 
unknown contributor to the " Westminster Review." Those 
gentlemen seem to hesitate ; they are afraid of committing 
themselves, being fully aware that Prichard, Rawlinson, Max 
Miiller, Quatrefages, and other authors of the same school, are 
not precisely in favor of assigning the gorilla as the true ances- 
tor of man. They are perfectly wise, and, with justice, our 
Saviour called them " prudentiores filiis lueis in generatione 
sua." There is visible, in fact, in the way they speak and 
write on the subject, a kind of awe and fear, lest, by raising 
the question, they burn their fingers and have to drop it in- 
stantly as too hot for their flimsy, dry, and combustible theories. 



460 



GENTILISM. 



Has not Rawlinson already hinted that in the Aryan, Semitic, 
and Turanian families we can perceive the posterity of the 
three sons of Noah ? And, indeed, we are confident the same 
shall be proved before long, as so many other biblical facts 
have been ascertained by independent inquirers after truth. A 
few words have been said anteriorly on the subject in our 
second chapter, to which we refer. It suffices, us to repeat 
that two consequences are to be undoubtedly derived from the 
great fact of aKvQia\ibc n namely, first, that its anteriority was 
one of expansion, not of origin ; second, that it ought to be 
included within the historic period, and cannot be made to sup- 
port the theory of prehistoric times ; and thus tha belief in 
primeval barbarism cannot find any help in the subject under 
consideration. Nay, as hinted previously, the Turanian race 
being evidently identical with the Hamitic, and the best ethno- 
graphers of our age seeming more and more disposed to adopt 
this conclusion, the whole bent of the question leans only to 
the admission of the debasement of the children of Ham, in- 
cluding the curse, the most unpalatable, certainly, of all biblical 
assertions. All this "being duly considered, there is no great 
reason to be surprised that the supporters of the new theories 
hesitate in taking advantage of the Allophylian system of 
races. 

But it is time to come to the religious and moral question in 
this most obscure subject, and to ask ourselves if we can prove, 
at least by implication, that the old Turanians led a patriarchal 
life, and believed in one God, like their Aryan and Semitic 
brethren. 

First, there is the great, we may say stupendous, fact of the 
trilingual inscriptions found still everywhere in Asia, whose 
most remarkable details are referred to by Rawlinson. They 
are written in cuneiform characters, and consequently must be 
ascribed to the earliest times of the settlement of man in those 
countries. ■ They are called trilingual because they invariably 



SUPPLEMENT AEY. 



461 



proclaim the same facts in three different tongues — the Semitic, 
Aryan, and Turanian dialects. Many of them were certainly 
engraved under the Persian kings of the Achemenidae family ; 
and as Herodotus informs us that in his own time there were 
yet a large Scythian population spread in Asia among the 
more recent and cultivated races which then ruled the country, 
it becomes evident that all over that great continent the pos- 
terity of the three sons of Noah lived together, but spoke dif- 
ferent dialects, reducible to three, original languages, which our 
modern philologists can now read in the precious inscriptions 
we are for the moment discussing. 

]STo complete list of them has been made, as far as we are 
informed. It is very probable that a few only are known, and 
the great majority of them are lost to civilized man over those 
rude steppes of Central Asia. In the supposition, consequently, 
that in the few inscriptions that have reached us nothing is said 
that would convey to us a sufficiently clear information of the 
Turanian religion in those primitive ages, it cannot be con- 
cluded tbat these people had no knowledge of God or were 
merely degraded fetichists. In fact, no conclusion whatever 
can be drawn ; and the best for us would seem to be to wait 
until more monuments of the kind have been discovered and 
deciphered. 

Still what is already known is not without its value. The 
mere insertion of the Turanian line in those documents en- 
graved on the hard rocks, prove that the Persian or Median 
kings considered their Turanian subjects as real men, not as 
pure slaves ; they were evidently reckoned as an integral part 
of the commonwealth ; they could read, certainly, since, un- 
doubtedly, it was for their particular benefit that the third line 
existed in those inscriptions. They were not, therefore, bar- 
barians, and must be considered as sharing in the civilization 
of their more favored brethren living among and ruling over 
them. 



462 



GENTILISM. 



Our friend Zarathustra speaks, it is true, of Turan as of a 
country of darkness, in opposition to Iran, the country of liglit ; 
and the very name indicates the races on which we now are 
expatiating. But the details given by the friend of Gustasp in 
his " Yendidad" show conclusively enough that the people of 
Turan were not savages. Against the people of the south, the 
great Bactrian reformer complained of idolatry ; they had in- 
troduced the worship of the devas in a primitively pure relig- 
ion ; they had abjured the monotheism of their ancestors to fall 
prostrate at the feet of inferior beings. This was for Zarathus- 
tra a cause of unrelenting war. Pie had nothing of the kind 
to allege against the people of Turan. The great complaint 
Zarathustra makes of them is, that they did not lead a sedentary 
life like the happy subjects of the good and great Gustasp ; 
they did not apply themselves to agriculture, to the planting 
of gardens, ov paradises, as they were called later on in Persia. 
Those beings, truly wretched in the estimation of the author of 
the Gathas, were mere nomads, travelling from place to place 
with immense herds and flocks, considering as their own prop- 
erty all the pasture-grounds they met on their way ; and thus, 
when they ventured south of the fortieth parallel, the well- 
cultivated plantations of Gustasp's country suffered somewhat 
from the roving habits of the Turanians. „ That is all ! 

But this, indeed, is a great deal ! It shows that the Tu- 
ranians led the life of Abraham, of Jacob, of the Arabian Job, 
of many Hindoo Bishis, and Belasgian rovers. These habits 
have a strange perfume of patriarchal manners ; and if the 
Turanians had left us some of their books, as we now possess 
some of those of Zarathustra, it is very possible that we would 
have heard a different story ; and the rude, nomadic manners of 
the- north might have met with some indulgence on our part, 
since, to us, modem people, belongs evidently the right of 
judging and deciding on everything connected with barbarism 
or civilization. The speech of the " paysan du Danube," in 



SUPPLEMENTARY. 



463 



the celebrated fable of Lafontaine, is certainly pointed enough, 
and shows some of the fallacies of an overgrown culture, at 
the same time that it establishes forcibly the claims of a simple 
and inoffensive freedom for the most unsophisticated part of 
mankind. But that " paysan " is just a Scythian, a Turanian, 
an Allophylian, anything you choose, except a refined Aryan 
or Semite. The author of the fable, it is time, supposes him 
to be a German and an agriculturist ; but Lafontaine lived in 
an age when ethnology was unknown ; had he been born a 
couple of centuries later, he would have made him come from 
Turan, and extoll the advantages of a nomadic life, as a true 
Cossack of the Danube or the Don is in duty bound to do. 

But pleasantry apart, it is seriously true that the roving 
habits of the ancient Scythian race, as it was called by the 
Greek authors, did not suppose a state of barbarism and sav- 
agery. We see in Persian history, when their country was in- 
vaded by Darius, how coolly, systematically, and successfully 
they opposed an army of seven hundred thousand men by the 
only strategy which could defeat the enemy. They did exactly 
what the Russians did in our age to overthrow Napoleon. 
They retired into the -interior of their wild country, driving 
back their herds before them, destroying all the crops which 
could furnish food to the Persians, and filling up the wells 
where the enemy could have obtained pure water. In a few 
months, Darius, the Mede, had to return with a poor remnant 
of his former splendid and numerous troops, and, perhaps, not 
one of his soldiers would have returned if the Athenian gen- 
eral, left in charge of the bridges over the Danube, had not 
kept faith with the Persian monarch, and waited, according to 
promise, for the falling back of the defeated army. In this 
occurrence the Turanian races of Northern Europe — the least 
advanced of all the tribes of the same stock, according to 
public opinion — showed a foresight, a sturdy energy, a well- 
sustained perseverance worthy only of very civilized people. 
31 



464 



GENTILISM. 



After agriculturist nations, the pastoral tribes are certainly 
to be accounted the most civilized ; they are, in that regard, far 
in advance of the hunting and fishing hordes. Every eth- 
nologist admits this view of the matter, and classifies the races 
of mankind according to this standard. But in the estimation 
of all well-informed men, the Turanian tribes are mostly in- 
cluded among the pasture-graziers, stock-raising, and cattle- 
feeding people. They were primitively all nomads ; and if 
some of them have been agriculturists for many ages — as the 
Chinese, who certainly belong to that class of nations — the 
great majority of them, to the present clay, are yet nomad and 
pastoral people. All the Tartar nations, so numerous and far- 
spread in point of territory, are of this category. The Arabs, 
almost without exception, were formerly of the same charac- 
ter, and many Arabian tribes continue to be the same to this 
day. The Turanians, therefore, even those of the earliest age, 
partook of the general characteristics of many Semitic tribes ; 
and we know that Baron Larrey considers the Syro-Arabian 
type of man as the highest in existence, placing it, as he does, 
directly above the Hellenic and Caucasian. To be sure, the 
physical characters of all Semites are of a higher order than the 
same features of any Turanian stock ; but the habits of both 
classes of men being essentially the same, namely, pastoral 
and rural, indicate almost the same degree of civilization. 

The conclusion to be drawn from all these considerations is 
plain and forcible : the Turanians have never been savages, 
and many of them have attained a high state of culture. But 
we must come to the real difficulty, included in the very simple 
question, What of their religion ? 

For the solution of it we have no books, sacred or profane, 
belonging to the whole race ; no general traditions current 
among them — except, undoubtedly, flood traditions — no narra- 
tive of migrations connecting them with higher races ; nothing 
that can be extracted from their language which is of a quite 



SUPPLEMENTARY. 



465 



different character from that of the Aryans or Semites. Nay, 
their tongues are rather a real stumbling-block in our way, since 
they never had an alphabet, and scarcely ever rose to the hiero- 
glyphic character, or, worse still, to picture-writing. How can 
we hope to know which God they worshipped, which code of 
morality they followed, what social principles they had primi- 
tively adopted ? There is only one way left us to come out of 
this labyrinth ; but it is, after all, a simple and easy one. It 
will directly open itself to us if we merely ask the secondary 
question : Are there yet Turanian nations in existence, and 
what are they in point of religion and morality ? Their 
present status may unveil to a great extent their mysterious 
origin. 

All the ethnographers of our age are agreed upon this: 
that the Chinese belong to the universally-spread Turanian 
race. This seems to be a settled point ; and this finally clears 
up a great deal of the mystery which, till our days, hung as a 
thick mist on the origin of this extraordinary nation. There 
are other actual races of men which likewise can claim the 
same starting-point ; among them the pure Tartars, and the 
Siberian tribes ; but as their history is less known than that of 
the native inhabitants of the Celestial empire, and as we are 
limited in the space left us for these last investigations, we 
must confine ourselves to the single line of inquiry suggested 
by the real antiquities of China. 

It may be considered as certain that the same race of inhabit- 
ants has lived in this extreme part of Asia since the first mi- 
gration of man from his original centre. They must have come 
from the West ; and if the general opinion about them is cor- 
rect, and they are Hamites, they must have started either from 
Africa or from that part of western Asia which is contiguous 
to it. They have annals going back to the year 2637 before 
Christ; but the followers of Lao-tseu speak of interminable 
dynasties reaching, finally, up to the first monarch, Pankou, 



466 



GENTILISM. 



whose surname, Hoen-tun (primordial chaos); indicates the 
purely mythological character of the history. It is knowu. 
moreover, that the spread of the Hamites was anterior to that 
of the Aryans and Semites. 

In order to determine their primitive religion — the only 
thing of real importance here — the first step must be to con- 
sider their public worship since the Europeans became in con- 
tact with them. At the time of the landing of the Portuguesa 
on their coast — the beginning of the sixteenth century — the 
religious aspect of the country was precisely what it is at this 
moment, with the exception of a few hundred thousand Chris- 
tians existing at present, who have been with great difficulties 
converted to the true faith. The great mass of the common 
people was then, and is yet, Buddhist ; and as the founder of 
the sect, Gautama, is not older than six hundred years before 
Christ, we cannot consider this system of atheistic idolatry as 
having any connection with the primeval worship of the Chi- 
nese. "This element ought, therefore, to be set aside, and there 
is no need of making any future allusion to it. The remainder 
of the population is composed of followers of Lao-tseu, and of 
Confucius, and it is among these two branches of religious 
opinion that we may be. able to discover the original worship 
of the Chinese. The first of 'these philosophers was born in 
604 before Christ, half a century previous to Confucius. He 
founded the religion of the Tao (supreme reason), which, he 
pretended, is anterior to, and the source of, the divinities I, Hi, 
Wei. But he did not reject the worship of these divinities. 
He, on the contrary, taught openly the belief in the existence 
of a spiritual world, giving rise to spiritual manifestations 
among men, and connected with a whole system of migration 
of souls after death. The religion of Lao-tseu, therefore, is 
not altogether an atheistic system ; far from it ; and, conse- 
quently, a great number of common people in China still fol- 
low it. Its priests live in temples and small communities with 



SUPPLEMENTAEY. 



467 



their families, "deriving," it is said, "a precarious livelihood 
from the sale of charms." 

The sect of Confucius, who appeared directly after Lao- 
tseu, is of a very different character. It embraces only rich 
men, or officials of the government called Mandarins. It is 
merely a system of moral philosophy clothed in a fantastical 
symbolism ; the four cardinal virtues : piety, morality, justice, 
and wisdom, coming into combination with mere physical 
beings or attributes of matter, such as moistness, fire, winds, 
water, mountains, thunder, earth. Heaven and earth with 
man become, as it were, the heads of three series, called king- 
doms. The only question is to know if Heaven — Tien, or 
Shanti — is merely the material heaven, or the God of heaven. 
Everyone is acquainted with the long controversy which arose 
in China last century among the Catholic missionaries ; a con- 
troversy which ended by a Pontifical decree forbidding to allow 
the Chinese converts to use the native rites, chiefly to Tien, or 
Shanti ; as evidently in the modern Chinese religion, the 
direct object of those rites is only what is generally called 
" the vault of heaven," and not God himself. The system of 
Confucius is, therefore, positively an atheistic system ; and it 
is not in it that we can find the primeval religion- of China, if 
it was monotheistic. Our only hope, consequently, must turn 
toward the actually despised religion of Tao, to which belongs 
a great number of people of the lowest class. 

A remark, however, on what has just been said of Confu- 
cius' system, cannot be deprived of interest. We find in it, 
together with cardinal virtues, physical entities which are not 
entirely foreign to our previous acquaintance with Ilindostan. 
Moistness is probably the moist atmosphere, and must be the 
Indra of the Yedas ; fire is certainly Agni / winds must be 
the meruts of India, etc. Who knows if primitively Heaven 
was not Brahma neuter, or the invisible God ; and Earth, Brah- 
ma male, or the visible universe ? For the Pontifical decision 



468 



GENTILISM. 



of the question affected only actual times and circumstances ; 
the object of Rome was to prevent actual Chinese Christians 
from performing really superstitious, if not- positively idola- 
trous, rites. But the consideration of the primitive religion of 
China did not, and could not enter into the mind of the Su- 
preme Pontiff. We are at liberty, therefore, to ask ourselves 
if originally the religious ideas of the Chinese were not very 
different from what they are actually, and if there has not been 
a decline in their belief, as it has been found out was the case 
with the Indians, Egyptians, and Greeks ? And on the thres- 
hold of this investigation we are surprised to see the nomencla- 
ture of Confucius' preternatural beings coincide in many points 
with that of the Yedic devatas. 

It is, however, in the primitive system of Lao-tseu that we 
are more likely to find what interests us at this moment ; and 
we must consider more closely what is called the Tao religion 
in China. G. Pauthier and Abel de Re"musat in France have, 
it may be said, profoundly studied the question. The first 
published a " Memoir on the origin and propagation of the 
doctrine of Tao," and illustrated it with a commentary drawn 
from Sanscrit books, and from the Tao-te-Mng of Lao-tseu ; the 
whole followed by the translation of two Vedic Upanishads, 
having a visible reference to the Tao doctrine. The book ap- 
peared in Paris in 1831. 

From the publication of this important work, it became 
evident that the primeval belief of the Chinese was not com- 
pletely isolated from that of other primitive races ; and a new 
and important link was established between the Turanian 
family of nations and their Aryan brethren. But it is chiefly 
the text itself of the Chinese author which was found full of 
philosophical and religious considerations which few men in- 
deed could have expected. The general opinion of all those 
who are acquainted with modern China is, that apart from the 
Buddhist votaries given over to the senseless superstitions re- 



SUPPLEMENTARY. 



469 



placing for the vulgar the open atheism advocated by the chiefs 
of the sect, apart, we say, for the degrading idolatry of the 
worshippers of Fo or Buddha, the remainder of the nation, 
the upper classes of society in particular, are left absolutely 
without a religion of any kind, except the worship of ancestors ; 
do not believe neither in a personal God, nor in the immor- 
tality of the soul ; live brutally in this world, and die with a 
complete indifference, as expecting no other. This is the uni- 
versal, and for aught we know, the correct opinion of all well- 
informed people. • 

But the books called Kings come here counter to that idea, 
and certify that it has not always been so in that devoted coun- 
try. Before the age of Lao-tseu, the Y-King existed already, 
and was attributed to Fo-hi, identified by many learned men 
with Noah himself. But ' whatever may be thought of this 
pretension, it is sure that in the Y-King there is question of a 
real God appearing at the origin of this visible creation, the 
corner-stone of it, and evidently its regulator at least ; since He 
is called Ly and Tao, that is, Law and Reason. This is, in- 
deed, as cold and dry as the Chinese character ; and the exuber- 
ance of fancy of other cosmologists, chiefly in Hindostan and 
Greece, is poorly replaced at the extreme end of the Asiatic 
continent ; yet Ly and Tao is, at least, as imaginative as the 
primum mobile of Aristotle ; and the writer of the Y-King in- 
tended certainly to strike the mind of his readers and call 
their attention to the mighty Governor of the world. 

But we must carefully examine the chief supernatural expres- 
sions contained in the Kings attributed to Lao-tseu ; for this 
philosopher wrote several of them, particularly one of great 
importance. Those which are supposed to be the work of Con- 
fucius would poorly reward us for our trouble, as the great 
moralist of China seems not to have had the least idea of a. real 
God ; and, on this account, have we already set aside his doc- 
trine, which we leave without regret to the meditations of the 



470 



GENTILISM. 



Mandarins. The Tao-te-King seems to be really the work of 
Lao-tseu ; and it will be sufficient to confine our investigations 
within the circle of this extraordinary work. Since the " Me- 
moir " published by Pauthier in 1831, Stanislas Julien, another 
French sinologue, gave from the manuscripts of his confrere a 
translation of the whole Tao-te-King, which appeared in Paris 
in 1842. 

The word Too itself is somewhat obscure. Taken materially 
it means only a way, a road. But Lao-tseu was a metaphysical 
and religious writer, and from the context of the whole book 
it is clear that it means a road to lead to reason ; and the word 
reason, from the same context, must receive a high interpreta- 
tion, and designates certainly primordial reason, the mind 
which created the world, and which governs it as the soul gov- 
erns the body. It is thus somewhat akin to the Aoyoq of the 
Greek schools, with, it is true, something of the pantheism 
of the Hindoo " Universal Soul." 

From the investigations of Pauthier and of Kemusat, the 
word Too has, in fact, three significations, which Lao-tseu em- 
braced, or rather supposed were contained, at the same time, 
in this short expression. It means, first, reason, properly so 
called ; then, speech ; finally, the Supreme Reason of God ; 
exactly as Aoyog in Greek, which also is susceptible of these 
three meanings. 

In a celebrated passage of the Tao-te-King, it is said that 
this " reason has no name, in some respect, and in another 
respect, it has a name ; " and a Chinese commentator on these 
words of Lao-tseu expresses himself in this wise : " By itself and 
in its essence Reason cannot have a name, since it existed pre- 
vious to all beings (before names were required to distinguish 
them) ; but when primordial motion began, and oeing suc- 
ceeded to no-oeing, it could receive a name." 

It is impossible not to remark here almost an identity with 
the Veclas of Hindostan and the Hermaic books of Egypt. 



SUPPLEMENTARY. 



471 



In the twenty-first chapter of the Tao-te-King there is men- 
tion made of a kind of cosmogony ; when to the indistinctness 
of primordial chaos, in which all beings were confused, imper- 
ceptible, indefinite — invisible, consequently — succeeded their 
actual state of order, perceptibility, explicitness, and, in conse- 
quence, visibility. This is, no doubt, the Egyptian doctrine of 
the visible Universe, son of the invisible God ; but in the doc- 
trine of Lao-tseu, the very first expression is pure pantheism. 
This ought not to surprise, since, at that very epoch, the sixth 
century before Christ, it was thus likewise in Egypt. 

The forty-second chapter contains the following remarkable 
apophthegm : " Reason produced one ; one produced two ; 
two, three ; three, everything. The Universe is based on an 
obscure principle (matter) ; it is embraced by a lucid principle, 
(heaven); a tepid afflatus harmonizes the whole." Out of 
this vague and indefinite sentence Christian truths can be de- 
duced, as well as pantheistic and ITeoplatonist errors. 

But the most remarkable passage, perhaps, of the whole 
book, is the following : " What you look at and do not see, is 
I ; what you listen to and do not hear, is Hi ; what you try to 
touch and cannot is Wei — three beings which cannot be under- 
stood and form but One. The first of them is neither brighter 

nor more obscure than the last Whoever can conceive 

a right idea of the primitive state of reason (the non-existence 
of beings before creation) can know the principle, and holds 
in his hand the chain of reason." 

Many Catholic missionaries saw in these words an almost 
clear expression of the Trinity. This holy dogma is certainly 
more positively asserted in this passage than in any Platonist 
sentence which the Fathers of the Church understood as con- 
taining it. The most striking part of it is undoubtedly the 
nomenclature of the successive letters I, H, V, which reproduce 
almost exactly the Hebrew tetragrammaton IHV — Jehova — 
and which many learned men have recognized in the Iao of 



472 



GENTILISM. 



the Greeks, the Jov. of the Latins, and the Jub. or Juba of the 
Mauritanians. 

* 

The individual life of Lao-tseu presents many analogies with 
that of Pythagoras. He is said to have travelled in the west, 
towards Hindostan consequently ; he pretended also to have 
passed through several successive transformations. His doc- 
trine is as redolent of Pythagorism, and of Platonism in theory, 
as of Stoicism in ethics. All these particularities are, no 
doubt, totally unknown to his actual votaries in China, who 
belong to the most ignorant classes of society ; nay, the priests 
of the sect he founded, who are known chiefly in this age 
for their vulgarity, and the sordid inclination which prompts 
them to sell charms, and live at the expense of the people, 
know probably nothing of the elevated doctrines of the Tao-te- 
King J yet the book exists, and Europe is indebted for the 
knowledge of it to Pauthier, Julien, and Remusat. To these 
gentlemen we owe the advantage of a positive acquaintance 
with primitive China, and consequently with more than half 
the Turanian world. Owing to this we have acquired the cer- 
tainty that the ancient SiivOionog was not a state of barbarism. 
All the details which have just passed under review prove, on 
the contrary, that, as with respect to the Aryan and Semitic 
families of nations, so likewise with regard to these, the higher 
we go in point of time the more enlightened the Turanians 
were ; and we have a right to assert that as the Tao-te-King of 
Lao-tseu was a compilation of only the sixth century before 
Christ, it was not the very text of the books which existed 
anteriorly, and out of which the founder of the Tao-sse formed 
his system. The original work must have been much more 
clear and emphatic in regard to the Unity, Infinity, Almighti- 
ness of the Creator, chiefly in regard to His personality and 
Infinite power over the world. A new proof, if it were need- 
ed, that at the beginning all races of men enjoyed a high relig- 
ious and moral knowledge. 



SUPPLEMENTARY. 



473 



Another very important remark is derived from the palpable 
and most evident character of the Tao-te-King. It is altogeth- 
er a dry and metaphysical composition. It almost reproduces in 
China the peculiarities of the Sankya philosophy in Hindo- 
stan. As the writers of this Indian school indulged in abstruse 
theoretical speculations, which changed altogether the scope of 
the elevated compositions of the Vedas, and introduced a thor- 
ough and consistent pantheism, whilst in the previous upan- 
ishads this error was contained only in germ, and was counter- 
acted by many clear and emphatic utterances of the primitive 
doctrine, so likewise the work of Lao-tseu presents to our 
intellect a series of most abstract apophthegms and considera- 
tions, all merging in a dry pantheism*, as absolute and rigorous 
as that of the Sankya philosophy. There is not, therefore, any 
rashness in supposing that this erroneous and strict system of 
the Chinese philosopher was derived from a previous, far supe- 
rior doctrine, of which the human mind had not been the sole 
expounder, but which can be, by analogy at least, attributed to 
that primitive revelation whose vestiges we have encountered 
everywhere in the ancient world. From all previous considera- 
tions the idea that all ancient religions began by pantheism 
must by this time be exploded. 

The few discoveries lately made in Turanian antiquities have 
not thus been altogether barren of interesting results. It is a 
field which has just been opened these last few years. When 
more is known of it, and men of true science and impartial 
mind, like Prichard and Eawlinson, have collected new facts, 
analyzed and classified them, the conclusions which we begin 
to foresee, and which already, to a certain extent, can be de- 
duced and enunciated, will be much more precise, and, in our 
firm conviction, complete the demonstration which, at the pres- 
ent time, can be but given with some diffidence and hesitation. 
It is, however, already a strict conclusion from facts lately 
known, that the most primitive times of mankind were not 



474 



GENTILISM. 



universally given over to barbarism, and to manners akin to 
those of the brute. This, at least, is strictly deduced from 
what is positively known of those early times. 

A last reflection on China as an index of the Turanian 
period, is naturally inferred from the government and social 
state of this extraordinary country. It subsists yet under 
the patriarchal polity ; and although the Emperor is in fact a 
despot, he preserves at least, pro forma, in all bis decrees, the 
original language of a father. A multitude of details in legis- 
lation, social customs, and inveterate habits, find their best ex- 
planation in the origin of government on the clan pattern. 
Henry Sumner Maine has lately demonstrated that the laws of 
ancient Rome, and those of modern England, are clearly refer- 
able to tbe same source ; but he might have found a still more 
striking example of his theory in modern China. The book on 
"Ancient Law" deserves, however, to be read by all men desir- 
ous of obtaining an exact knowledge of primitive times.* And 
nothing more appropriate and confirmatory of the views advo- 
cated all along by us, could have been published at this time. 
Ve only regret not to have known the book except at this last 
moment of our present writing. 

It is evidently one of the most important branches of archae- 
ological study, to dive in the few remains existing in Asia and 
northern Europe, of what has been called the Turanian period. 
Inscriptions, monuments, fragments of the human body, skulls 
particularly, suck as those studied by Dr. Pruner-Bey in the 
north of France, everything even of the least importance ap- 
parently, ought to be collected with care, compared, examined 
attentively, and explained with respect to their bearings on the 
religion, customs, and civilization of those primitive times. 
This is, in our opinion, the most sure means of dispelling and 
exorcising the phantom of barbarism, evoked with such perse- 

* In Appendix II., at the end of this volume, the reader will find some 
reflections on Mr. Maine's " Ancient Law." 

I 



SUPPLEMENTARY. 



475 



veranee by a multitude of modern writers. If our first progen- 
itors were barbarians we will surely find the proofs of it in 
Turanian relics. But let the inquirer ascertain first, that what- 
ever he chooses for the basis of his investigations is really an- 
cient and primeval ; let him not, like Sir John Lubbock, look 
eagerly after the fish-hooks, stone-hatchets, oaken clubs of some 
modern degraded islanders, and conclude forthwith that these 
were the tools of primitive man ; let him not collect all the 
senseless tales, obscene details, and brutish narratives related 
by travellers of actually living tribes on the extreme verge of 
poor degraded humanity, and exclaim at once that this is 
always the first phase of human history, and the first inklings 
of " early civilization." But let the impartial inquirer ascer- 
tain positively that whatever he has ^found and collected, is of 
a real antiquity, appertains to the primitive Turanian epoch, 
can be proved to be referable to the early onvdiapoc; of Epi- 
phanius and Herodotus; and the sure conclusion will be that 
even then men were civilized, adored the true God, and had a 
code of morality akin to ours. 

The circle at last is, we think, completed, the curve is closed, 
and no link is missing in the long chain. The Aryan family of 
nations has spoken with unanimity, in an unmistakable lan- 
guage, and has appeared before us in its native grandeur and 
solemn aspect. The Semitic races seemed at first to frustrate 
our hopes, and stand in judgment against our conclusions ; but 
a more close attention has brought even them in accord with 
their Japhetic brethren, and the Hebrew branch of that great 
family has made amends for previous misconceptions, and given 
back to the whole stock the precious boon which they seemed 
to have lost. Nothing could give a stronger confirmation to the 
assertions of our first chapter, and bring more in relief the 
primitive plan of God in the creation of the human species. 



476 



GENTILISM. 



The Turanians, finally, although still somewhat doubtfully, are 
gradually brought back to a dignified level with their more 
favored brethren ; and this uncertain utterance in their voice 
agrees precisely with what we conceive to be the- necessity of 
the case with respect to the descendants of Ham, the inheritors 
of the curse of Canaan. 

But, together with the -primeval unanimity of the whole 
human race in expressing th,e same truths, and exhibiting the 
same conscientious morality, the subsequent history of all the 
branches of mankind has manifested with clearness, and with 
an unfortunate accord, the great law of degeneracy which can 
be pointed out everywhere on earth during the thousands of 
years which preceded Christianity. Hindostan, Central Asia, 
Egypt, Greece, Italy, and the whole anterior Turanian world 
have spoken the same language, and demonstrated the same 
fact. Only, it is true, a few broad and bold features of it have 
been brought forward, and formed the chain of the argument. 
But to this were we reduced by the limits of our plan. The 
reader must be, by this time, persuaded that an indefinite num- 
ber of details could easily be adduced to strengthen the same 
conclusions. Volumes of notes, taken from the annals of an- 
cient nations, and scarcely ever contradicted by other facts of a 
dissimilar character, could without difficulty be printed — culled 
in reading, with pen in hand, from the innumerable books 
which daily issue from the press of all nations, in all languages, 
and of all schools, even of the one most opposed to our view of 
the case. 

This ancient law of degeneracy must, by this time, be con- 
sidered as strictly demonstrated, and it is to be wondered at 
that there are yet assertors of the " continuous progress " of 
mankind. ■ 

Yet a strong objection meets us here with regard to the 
entire tone of this volume, an objection which unfortunately 
becomes every day more emphatic and outspoken, although it 



S UPPLEMENTAK Y. 



477 



saps the foundation of society, and opposes, with its stern re- 
solve, all the leanings of the human race in all ages, if we 
except the small band of materialists, and atheists more active 
now than ever. 

The objection is this : The plan of history you draw sup- 
poses in your primitive revelation a direct intervention of God 
which is not proved, and you 'are reduced to represent man as 
unable to develop his own destiny by his own efforts, con- 
stantly in struggle with his Master, yet finally conquering even 
Him, to fall directly a prey to his own degraded passions. In 
our age science requires that the moral world should be ex- 
plained without a deus ex maehina, but merely by the play of 
human agency and human power. 

This is the proud and, we may say, awful dictum of many 
writers of our age, in the opinion of whom God, if lie exists, 
does not condescend to care for His creatures, but leaves them 
to their fate, even in the supposition that He gave them exist- 
ence. Apuleius himself would have explained : " Can we be 
left without the thought, and the hope of heaven ?" To declare 
that everything supernatural ought to be rejected at once, by 
the very fact that it is above nature ; to disconnect consequently 
the history of man from the designs of a Creator and Master ; 
to abandon us to an unknown destiny, and condemn us to a 
perpetual ignorance of our origin and our end, is the most ter- 
rible sentence which can be pronounced against humanity. 
"With numberless aspirations towards a supreme happiness, and 
owing to this, always dissatisfied with what the earth can afford, 
claiming by all the aims of our soul kindred with God himself, 
and in our inmost consciousness infinitely superior to the whole 
earth on which we tread, we are told that all these longing de- 
sires are deceptions, and that this irresistible attraction towards 
heaven is a folly. The whole of mankind protests against this 
condemnation to self-abasement, and a condemnation, too, pro- 
nounced by a few theorists who pretend that their only aim is 



478 



GENTILISM. 



to restore to mankind its rights. Away with such rights which 
end in dishonor and nothingness ! We know better, since the 
hand of God has imprinted in our very hearts, together with 
His law, the promise of the reward due to its observance, 
namely, the possession of heaven and of Himself. 

Who is base enough to advise us to reject what our nature 
aspires to with all its energy, ancl embrace what cannot be but 
loathsome to a noble soul ? Yet all this pretension, that science 
must set Grod and His revelation aside, in order to have our 
mind enlightened with regard to our origin and destiny, comes 
finally to this : that we are not placed on a higher level than 
the beasts of the field, and like them are destined to perish for 
ever. Since if you take away our heavenly aspirations and 
call them folly, you take away our title-deeds, and leave us de- 
prived of inheritance, the most forlorn and miserable of mere 
animals fated to enjoy life a moment and sink down for ever 
into nothingness. But, indeed, this is to ignore completely our 
very nature ; and thus to remove from us the sphere of the 
supernatural is to deny the highest prerogatives of human kind. 

ISTay, we cannot remain even here, and be satisfied with so suf- 
ficient an answer to the pretended objection previously record- 
ed. AVe answer again with more emphasis : Our assertion — with 
respect to a primitive communication of heaven with man — we 
have proved by facts and texts, and the same facts and texts have 
disproved yours. If the history of man is not such as we de- 
scribed, it may be, we confess, such as you depict. But is there 
a line in this volume which does not contradict your positions ? 
and is the whole amount of facts it contains assailable by any- 
thing you can bring forward? More, you falsely pretend that 
you have science on your side ; it is on ours undoubtedly ; for 
nearly all, if not all, the facts recorded in these pages, are either 
the direct result of impartial scientific inquiry into the annals 
of primitive nations, or the evident consequences drawn from 
those inquiries. The supernatural question is, therefore, de- 



SUPPLEMENTARY. 



479 



cided even scientifically ; and the more these questions into 
the origin of man will be studied, the nearer will the con- 
clusion come to our Bible records ; then there will be a perfect 
agreement — as it is proper it should be — between science and 
revelation. 

But, besides these individual researches of some learned men 
of great erudition and impartiality, our own decision of the 
question, such as we have briefly attempted it, rests likewise on 
the universal- assent of all nations, among whom the great 
dogma, that God created man, spoke to him, directs him, is the 
fountain of truth, and the rewarder of virtue, has, primi- 
tively at least, been admitted everywhere. This book, after 
all, is but the humble index of the thoughts of mankind. In 
it man himself speaks and acts ; and humanity has always re- 
jected with scorn any religion which is not supernatural. Men 
have said that it was a hicjnan religion, and this was sufficient 
for its condemnation. It was reserved to our age to proclaim 
religion as not coming from God ; and to reject whatever bears 
His holy name, as unscientific — unscientific, because permit- 
ting us to explain the existence of the world by a superhuman 
agency ; as if it were not the height of folly to pretend to give 
the reason of it without a Maker and a Master, that is, without 
a Cause and a Lawgiver ! 

But if such a pretension is, and has always been, considered 
as the abjuration of common sense ; if it is a strong proof, on 
the contrary, of a well-balanced mind, to acknowledge that this 
world must have had a Creator, and man a Heavenly Father ; 
then the assertion of a primitive revelation is but a natural 
consequence of this belief, and the very fact of it must be con- 
sidered as proved. For how can we prove that God has spoken 
to man, except, first, by the unanimous consent of mankind on 
the subject ; second, by the doctrine itself communicated to 
man primitively, and evidently worthy of God ; third, by the 
innate consciousness, of each of us, that if Grod has made us, 
32 



480 



GEJSTTILISM. 



He must take care of us, and intimate to us His holy will that 
we may not go counter to it ? Our arguments are directed 
here to non-Christians ; the children' of the Church have the 
word of their Mother. 

But the objection states further, that, in this case, man, un- 
able to develop his own destiny by his own efforts, is con- 
stantly and naturally engaged in a struggle with his Master, 
yet finally conquers Him, to fall directly a prey to his own 
degraded passions. This, as usual with rationalistic thinkers, 
represents human history under a false light by merely giving 
an absurd correlation to the two great agents of its develop- 
ment. 

Undoubtedly there are two real agents in it, Cod and Man. 
The rationalist and evolutionist philosophers suppress one of 
the terms, God, and think they have admirably simplified the 
problem, and given to the second term, Man, a sublime position 
on earth, making him independent of any Master, and the only 
manager of his own destiny. We have sufficiently spoken of 
this " proud elevation." But we complain that Cod and man 
are spoken of by the evolutionists as if we made them equal 
agents in the history of the world, and each independent of 
the other ; struggling together, alternately victorious or con- 
quered. This is not the view we have taken of human history 
in this volume. 

Man, in our mind, has a sublime position on earth. He is, 
even after his fall, the true king of creation, and has yet do- 
minion over all inferior creatures ; he is, moreover, a free 
agent ; and the consciousness of this eminent prerogative 
obliges him to call himself constantly to a strict accountability 
for all his actions. For both his dominion over the world, and 
his high endowment of a free will, he must own himself in- 
debted to a Superior Being, with whom it would be sacrilegious 
in him to claim any sort of equality. His own conscience 
teaches him that he will have to give an account of himself, 



SUPPLEMENTARY. 



481 



and show what use he made of his own superiority over other 
creatures, and of his freedom of choice in all his actions. 
Both are immense prerogatives granted him by his Maker ; 
they give him an almost absolute power over the world, and 
by them, we may say, the history of this globe and of its in- 
habitants is left to him. When he follows the will of God in 
the proper use of these two eminent attributions, he rises in 
true civilization, and preserves the gifts he had originally 
received. Should he, on the contrary, abuse his power, he is 
not ' victorious over God,' who always remain infinitely above 
him ; but he only ' resists God,' and in doing so he degrades 
himself, and would fall gradually to the level of the brute, if 
God had not pity of him and did not raise him again every 
time he stumbles. 

Thus the Creator had been infinitely good to him at the be- 
ginning, and continues to help him all along, even when he 
least deserves it. This help the theologians call divine grace- 
which is never denied in this life, and which is derived for us 
from the merits of a Redeemer who died for all, even for 
those that lived before His coming, or who refuse His help. 

This is the only " struggle " we can admit between God and 
Man in the drama of human history ; a struggle of infinite 
mercy on one side, of repeated ingratitude on the other ; end- 
ing always in a higher boon on the part of God, when man has 
reached the lowest depth of misery. This was seen first after 
the flood, when the patriarchal religion and civilization were 
granted anew to the only human family that remained ; 
secondly, at the call of Abraham, when a nation was taken 
apart to preserve intact the great truths required absolutely 
for the existence of man as a superior being. The Mosaic law 
was given later to last until a more profound degeneracy should 
require a more potent remedy. This, fourthly, brought from 
heaven , the only One to whom the inheritance of the nations 
had been promised from the beginning. 



482 GENTILISM. 

This is the way Christians have always understood the action 
of both God and Man in the world ; and this action supposes, 
necessarily, a supernatural relation between both ; supernatural, 
we mean, on the part of man who had, from his own, no title 
to such a favor, to a divine help so constant, so universal, so 
adequate to all his needs. 

Gentilism has proved this with respect to the original mercy 
of God in granting to all men the really supernatural boon of 
true religion and morality. And it has proved it, likewise, 
with respect to the law of degeneracy, as we called it, on the 
part of man, unable or unwilling to keep in their purity the 
primitive gifts he had received, and constantly falling clown 
deeper and' deeper, until real religion almost disappeared, and 
moral corruption nearly totally destroyed human conscience. 

Then, indeed, the need of heavenly help was greater than 
ever ; and it was given also more abundantly than at any pre- 
vious epoch. If the all-merciful action of God on human his- 
tory was undeniable in the facts recorded in these pages, it be- 
came at once overwhelmingly manifest in the establishment of 
Christianity and the sudden destruction of idolatry. Considered 
only as a turning-point in human history, Christianity cannot 
be explained without an influence far higher than that of man. 
In the supposition that this world has been left altogether 
to human agency, that no action of a superior being is re- 
quired to understand the totality of its annals, that science 
ought to clear up every difficulty, and to show independently 
of a heavenly power how every change has taken place on 
earth, at any period of its history, it can be maintained that 
the task would be perfectly hopeless when it is question of the 
conversion of mankind to God. What contributes to deceive 
people in this regard, is that they imagine the character of 
Christ can be reduced to the level of a merely human character. 
All those who have undertaken to do so have falsified the his- 
tory of the Incarnate Son of God. His divinity is as clear as 



SUPPLEMENT AKT. 



483 



the mid-day sunlight, and from it the mission of His apostles 
and their success becomes undeniable and really supernatural. 
But this is not the place to develop these few thoughts. All 
that needs be said is that the divine action in the primitive 
revelation granted to man is evident from the long subsequent 
revelation of God through Christ ; for both are so intimately 
connected as to form a perfect whole, whose parts cannot be 
dissociated. 

If the traditions so often mentioned in this volume, as uni- 
versal among all primitive nations, had any value, and be- 
longed to the history of the race, they recorded facts, dating 
from the very beginning of mankind ; among others, a fall 
from original innocence, a state of sin and bondage inducing a 
curse from which man could not be disenthralled, except by 
a future liberator ; and all this was to come from the infinite 
mercy of God. The bonds of union between the Creator and 
man, as revealed in those traditions, had been violently broken 
asunder, and the links of the chain could not be bound up 
together again except by a heavenly intervention. All nations, 
at the time of Christ, were in truth waiting for a Redeemer, 
and their expectation included an interposition from above. In 
the copy of those ancient records which Yirgil possessed, it was 
Virgin Astrsea who would c:me down from heaven, and bring 
back on earth the former golden age. It is evident that this 
last state would be supernatural, and raise man to a higher posi- 
tion than he could ever have expected, if left to his own 
earthly condition. The end of the series, supposing thus the 
intervention of God, the whole of it belonged to a world higher 
than this ; and consequently the essential character of the prim- 
itive traditions was of a supernatural nature, and cannot be 
inclosed within the limits of what is now called science. But 
what is more, the objection raised against the scheme of revela- 
tion, could thus be turned against the scientists with a tenfold 
greater force, and we might tell them : Tour knowledge of 



484 



GENTILISM. 



man supposes only physics and zoology to explain his origin 
and destiny ; yet all the annals, traditions, beliefs of the race 
proclaim a much higVr range of qualities for both, and all its 
aspirations protest against such a low estimate of its worth as 
this. Without a heavenly term at the beginning of the series, 
and a much brighter one at the end, man remains an enigma, 
and cannot be explained at all. Therefore, by the very act of 
rejecting the supernatural in taking a serious account of him, 
you commit suicide as scientists, and deprive yourselves of the 
only means of judging rightly of our humanity. 

This is so evident that it is an easy task to compare patri- 
archal religion, as we have called it, with Christianity, and to see 
the perfect analogy of both, on account precisely of their super- 
natural character, without which both the ancient and modern 
history of the race remain inexplicable. 

First, the primitive religion of mankind was, in essentials, 
the same for all nations, and would have kept the human fam- 
ily united, if pantheism and idolatry had not supervened, and 
multiplied to the last degree the seeds of division already sown 
by diversity of language, of race, and of private interests. 
Unity in religion, if it had lasted, would have counteracted all the 
other sources of contention among men ; at least, they would nev- 
er have forgotten altogether that they were the children of com- 
mon parents, had they continued to worship at the same altars, 
and to adore the same God. This primitive unity of belief, 
such as it was, prevented, at least for many ages, the flood of 
moral corruption, and of dark superstition from deluging the 
world ; and it was only when division had been carried to its 
last limits that the total dissolution of society was threatened 
by the excess of the evil then existing. This has been proved. 

In our modern times we see the Church, universal also, and 
prescribing to her children the same faith and the same rites. 
We thus contemplate a strict moral society in which men are 
united more strongly than by the bonds of politics or temporal 



SUPPLEMENTARY. 



485 



interests. The various nations which compose the population 
of the globe furnish to the true faith a greater or a smaller 
number of firm adherents, so as to exhibit the elements of a 
really universal society, and fulfilling to a ceitain degree tbe 
promises of old seers who have announced the reconstruction 
of primitive unity in the human family. Catholicity, or uni- 
versality, becomes thus a characteristic mark of regenerated hu- 
manity, both in tbe patriarchal period and in our Christian 
times. But in the one as in the other this mourlc partakes of a 
supernatural character, and cannot be even imagined if man is 
left to bis own efforts, without the co-operation of heaven. It 
is, in fact, by this co-operation alone that it is secured. 

Secondly, in those ancient times, which it has been a pleasure 
for us to study, we have universally admired a pure morality 
so constant, and exalted, that it has become a part of public 
opinion — if we may use that expression — to attach to a patri- 
archal state of society the idea of purity of manners and holiness 
of life. In the Christian Church, likewise, we admire the gift 
of sanctity which all the calumnies of men cannot take away 
from her. But tbis also supposes, on the part of God, a super- 
natural assistance, to keep up constantly the character of Holi- 
( ness. Tbis the history of the Church can prove. 

Finally, in a third place, a struggle, constant, terrible, preg- 
nant with the most serious consequences for humanity, has 
been witnessed going on in the patriarchal period, between 
Truth as coming from God and derived from heaven, and 
Error as suggested by the Evil One, and embraced by deluded 
idolaters. In the modern Church a constant hostility, also, is re- 
marked as developed throughout all ages, showing the Church 
standing in front of a hostile world, and conquering the more 
that she is the more assailed. The parallel between both 
periods could not be perfectly sustained, as the first had not 
received any promise of sure victory. But it has been granted 
to the Christian Church, which thus enjoys the privilege of 



486 



GENTILISM. 



perpetuity. In both certainly, as long as the struggle lasts, 
the intervention and help of heaven is required ; and thus in 
whatever aspect we may look at the question, the supernatural 
character comes uppermost, and refuses to be separated from it. 
This, of course, would require most ample considerations and 
developments. 

Nothing, however, is so manifest as the truth that human 
history is enacted by a mechanism which requires a double 
spring of action, that of God and that of man. Take away 
either of them, human history is impossible to narrate. Take 
away God for instance, and this world is reduced almost to a 
puppet-show. The strings, no doubt, are not merely made of 
hemp or wire ; they belong really to the native energy of the 
puppets who act from their own impulse, and seem to be 
enacting a powerful drama. But, be sure of it, dear reader, 
only those who propose to themselves to do the will of their 
Father in heaven, who act in conformity with it, and place 
themselves altogether under His guidance, are real men, and 
not puppets. For, the drama in reality is planned in the upper 
regions, and God himself directs it. He has not left this little 
globe to the mercy of mad people or of fools. He has given 
free will to these, it is true, and allows them to play occasion- 
ally so as " to make angels weep," as a great poet has said. 
But when they go too far in their absurd antics, He knows 
how to bring them to reason. He sends the Goths or the Tar- 
tars on their devastating career, and a new, and bright, and 
truly civilized world comes out of the ashes of the previous 
corrupt one. And the old Egyptian priest was not, after all, 
altogether wrong when he said that " when the gods, to purify 
the earth, deluge its surface with water .... then cities are 
hurried away to the sea by the impetuosity of the waters . . . ." 
And sometimes, " periodically, a current from heaven rushes 
on nations like a pestilence, which at once destroys them and 
their annals." 



» 



APPENDIX I. 

ON THE SIMILARITY OF THE INSTITUTIONS IN PRIMITIVE HINDOSTAN AND 
THE FORMER CELTIC COUNTRIES REFERRED TO AT PAGE 79. 



APPENDIX I. 



ON THE SIMILARITY OF THE INSTITUTIONS IN PRIMITIVE HINDOSTAN AND 
THE FORMER CELTIC COUNTRIES, REFERRED TO AT PAGE 79. 

It is extremely curious and pregnant with a deep interest to 
consider two countries so wide apart as Hindostan, and the ex- 
treme west of Europe, yet existing for many ages under the 
same institutions, although the peoples themselves differed so 
totally in character. The conclusion forces itself directly upon 
the mind that mankind must have been one at first, chiefly 
when a deeper study still shows that the intervening nations 
exhibited in ancient times a great approach to the same social 
state*. 

And, first, the three superior castes in India, namely : 
the Brahmins, the Cshastriyas, and the Yaysias, present them- 
selves at once as the prototypes of the Druids, the warrior * 
class, and the common clansmen in Celtic countries. The 
Sudras in Hindostan, were evidently, chiefly in old times, real 
outcasts not belonging strictly to the nation because not re- 
generated, and answering, to a certain extent, to the slaves of 
the Celts. The Pariahs were then called Chandalas, the most 
degraded of human beings, excluded almost from the thoughts 
of the Hindoos. 

But this general outlook might be the result of chance, and 
would not suffice certainly to establish a general theory on the 
primitive social state of man. It must be worked out in de- 
tail to bring conviction ; and this we intend to do, as briefly 
as possible, in this short Appendix. 

Our chief authority for the side of the picture which con- 

(489) 



490 



GENTILISM. 



cerns Hindostan, shall be the venerable Institutes or Laws of 
Menu ; the other side is naturally supplied by the knowledge 
now universal almost of the social state of the Celts. 

As some of our readers may be altogether unacquainted with 
the Menu Code, it is proper to say first a few words on the 
subject. The Hindoos firmly believed that the work was the 
production of Menu — generally it is now spelt Manu ; we keep 
the orthography to which we have been for a long time accus- 
tomed. This great lawgiver is said, of course, by the Hindoos 
to have been the son or grandson of Brahma, the first of created 
beings, a god himself, and the progenitor of mankind. Manu 
in fact means man. We may consider him — if we wish to 
identify ourselves with Hindoo feeling — as Adam, the father of 
the human race. It is of course a mistake on the part of the 
Indians ; Menu, the author of the Code, is not so ancient. Sir 
"William Jones examines, if he is not the same as the fabulous 
Minos of Crete, or the Egyptian Mneues, the first lawgiver 
according to Diodorus. 

That the book is of great antiquity there can be no doubt. 
It is written in the archaic Sanscrit of the first three Yedas : 
and it is supposed by modern critics to have been composed a 
few centuries after those celebrated books. Sir William Jones 
makes it 300 years posterior to the Yajur Yeda, which he thinks 
may have been wiitten 1580 years before Christ. But Hindoo 
chronology has been found to be perfectly unsafe ; and those 
conjectures are now discarded. The English translation, pub- 
lished at the beginning of this century by the founder of the 
Asiatic Society of Calcutta, is still considered as sure and re- 
liable, and we will use it. 

The caste, or rather class, of Brahmins, as it is called by 
Menu, had, at least in primitive times, so many characters alike 
to those of the Druids in Gaul and Britain, and of the OUamhs 
in Ireland, that with the least acquaintance with both of these, 
one is struck at once as if they were almost identical. 



APPENDIX I. 



491 



1st. To become a Druid or an Ollamh, required from six- 
teen to twenty years ; let us now hear Menu, Chap. Ill, 1 : 

" The discipline of a student (for the Brahminical order) 
may he continued for thirty-six years in the house of his pre- 
ceptor ; or for half that time (eighteen years), or for a quarter 
of it.'' Many other passages concur with this. 

2d. The Celtic student had to receive the oral teaching of 
an ordained Druid or OUamh, as the sacred books in Celtic 
countries were not written, but committed to memory and 
transmitted through tradition. In primitive Hindostan the 
law of Menu declared, II., 116 : 

" The student who shall acquire a knowledge of the Yedas 
without the assent of his preceptor, incurs the guilt of stealing 
the Scriptures." The result in both cases was the same : au- 
thorized teaching, safety from heterodox interpretation. 

3d. The attestation of " purity " in various things required 
of an Ollamh, or of a learned man in an inferior degree, is 
well known to any one versed in Celtic lore. In the Code of 
Menu nothing is so remarkable as the insistence on the moral 
purity of every degree required of a Brahmin, or of a student 
for the Braminical order, II. 88 : " In restraining the organs, 
which run wild among ravishing sensualities, a wiseman " — it 
is question here of Brahmins — " will apply diligent care, like a 
charioteer in managing restive horses." What are those or- 
gans % The author explains in the following paragraphs that 
they are those of sense — the five senses of the body — and those 
of action, besides the heart. Then he goes on to say : 97 : " To a 
man contaminatad by sensuality neither the Yedas, nor liber- 
ality, nor sacrifices, nor strict observances, nor pious austerities, 
ever procure felicity ;" and 100 : " Having kept all his mem- 
bers of sense and action under control, and obtained also com- 
mand over his heart, he will enjoy every advantage, even 
though he reduce not his body by religious austerities." 104 : 
" Near pure water, with his organs holden under control, and 



492 



GENTILISM. 



retiring to some unfrequented place, let him pronounce the gay- 
atri, performing daily ceremonies." The reader will remember 
that the Ollamh in Ireland, had to prove for himself purity of 
mouth, purity of hand, purity of conjugal union, and purity of 
body. 

4th. What was the course of studies for the Brahmin, and 
was it analogous to that of the Celtic Druid ? Many passages 
of the laws of Menu conclusively show that it was comprised 
in the " universal " Yedas. These included the mantras and 
bra/imanas, an immense collection of many diversified rites 
and prayers for the worship of God; the ujpanishads, long 
treatises of cosmology and philosophy ; and the Vedangas, or 
books on grammar, prosody, astronomy, mathematics, etc. 
These last, it is true, did not belong to the Yedas properly so 
called : yet they were as ancient as these, and formed also an es- 
sential part of the studies of Brahmins, since the laws of Menu, 
II., 105, say : " In reading the Vedangas, or even such parts 
of the Yedas as ought constantly to be read, there is no prohibi- 
tion of particular days, nor obligation to pronounce the texts 
appointed for oblations to fire." It may, therefore, only be 
said, that they were not of so sacred a character as the parts of 
the holy books, which could not be read on certain days, nor 
during storms, etc. We know from J. Osesar that the curri- 
culum of the Druidic schools in Gaul was exactly the same, 
although certainly the religious rites were not so various and 
minute, and the prayers probably were not so long and diver- 
sified. The copy of the Yedas preserved in the British Mu- 
seum forms eleven very large volumes, brought from India by 
the Swiss Col. Polier. The text delivered, orally, by the 
Druid teachers to their pupils may not have been so volumi- 
nous, but it comprised exactly the same course of studies : re- 
ligion, cosmogony, physics, astronomy, and grammar. 

The comparison could be carried on further, and a great deal 
more could be said on the authority both the Brahmins and the 



APPENDIX I. 



493 



Druids had in the State, chiefly on account of then* influence, 
through religion, over the rulers and kings. Many very strik- 
ing texts of the laws of Menu could be brought forward, and 
the conviction of the reader would be thereby strengthened, 
but our limits forbid it ; and we must be content, on this 
first point, to remark in general that the genius of oriental and 
southern people, being so different from that of western and 
northern races, an immense number of details contained in 
Hindoo literature appear on the surface completely at variance 
with what we know of the old Celtic stock ; but the difference 
lies only on the surface ; a deeper insight into the thing itself 
cannot but strike an intelligent reader and show him a large 
number of analogies which certainly prove an almost - identity 
of primitive institutions. One of the most remarkable dif- 
ferences, however, must be mentioned in a few words, and can 
easily be proved not to conclude in the least against our posi- 
tion. It is this : The Celts had a^ great number of historians 
from the oldest times, and their poetry itself was history in 
verse ; the Hindoos never had a single historian, but all their 
writers may be said to have been poets. Yet the truth is, the 
Hindoos thought they were writing history when they com- 
posed those immense epic poems of which we have spoken. 
Their exuberant imagination colored everything, and rendered 
them also incapable of attending to chronology ; but both Celts 
and Hindoos were profoundly traditional people, and in this 
» consists the true spirit of history. The difference, therefore, is 
not a real one, and our opinion remains intact. 

It will become yet considerably stronger by the consideration 
of the Cshastriya caste compared with the analogous class in 
Celtic countries. 

And first, the very title of the seventh chapter of the laws 
of Menu which treats of the subject, is extremely suggestive 
and appropriate. It reads : " On Government and Public 
Law ; or, on the Military Glass.'" The clear meaning of it 



494 



GEJSTTILISM. 



is that the " government " of the people was in the hands of 
" the military class." Hence the first order, that of the 
Brahmins, had nothing to do with " government " except in- 
directly hy their immense influence, the necessary result of 
their learned and religious character. The leading of the na- 
tion was, in fact, in the hands of the " warriors," called, in 
Ilindostan, " Cshastriya." It was precisely the same in Celtic 
countries ; the kings, rulers, chieftains, whatever the reader 
may please to call them, were first of all " warriors ; " their 
duty was to defend their clan by the force of arms. The Druids, 
so influential in every other respect, had nothing to do with 
the commanding of armed troops. The chieftains chose to 
help them, their knights of the red branch, their Fenian war- 
riors, the boldest and nimblest of their clansmen, and these 
formed the military class ; the sacerdotal order remained com- 
pletely outside of warlike organizations. 

In Ilindostan, the fact is most striking — that although the 
Brahmin class is everywhere represented so far above all the 
others, that it was said to have proceeded from the very mouth 
of Brahma, yet we doubt if ever a Brahmin, in full orders, 
ambitioned the high station of king and attained the object of 
his ambition. We know only that some few kings, after hav- 
ing ruled the State, left the throne through piety and asked to 
be received in the Brahminical order. But these very rare ex- 
ceptions show the strictness of the rule. Those who ruled the 
nation were invariably chosen among the Cshastriya class. We % 
never hear of a Brahmin aspiring to it. The same was cer- 
tainly the case in Celtic countries. 

Many details contained in the laws of Menu contribute to 
render the analogy more striking. At first sight it seems, from 
many texts, that the Hindoo Bajah, or king, was a despotic 
ruler, which the Celtic chieftain was not ; but a closer exami- 
nation shows that the difference is only apparent. ^ Both had a 
great power in the State ; but their authority was not despotic ; 



• 



APPENDIX I. 



495 



far from it — it was limited on both sides by the influence of 
the sacerdotal class, and likewise by the obligation, often 
repeated in the laws of Menu, to regard their subordinates as 
their " people," never their subjects, and to " defend " it — the 
people — at the expense of their life. The Celtic exclama- 
tion of the clansman to his chieftain is well known : " Eat me, 
but defend me ! " 

But many prescriptions of the Hindoo law, with respect 
to the private life of the Rajah, place the subject yet in a 
stronger light. Let us hear some of them. Chapter vii. 69 : 
" Let him — the king — fix his abode in a district of a champaign 
country, abounding with grain, inhabited chiefly by the vir- 
tuous, not infected with maladies, beautiful to the sight, sur- 
rounded by submissive mountaineers, foresters, or other neigh- 
bors ; a country in which the subject may live at ease." 'No 
better description could be given of the Irish rath. The fol- 
lowing texts complete the description : " 73. Foes hurt not a 
king who has taken refuge in his durga, or place of difficult 
access." " 74. One bowman placed in a wall is a match in war 
for a hundred enemies, etc." " 75. Let that fort be supplied 
with weapons, with money, with grain, with beasts, with Brah- 
mins, with artificers, with engines, with grass, and with 
water." " 76. In the centre of it let him raise his own palace, 
well finished in all its parts, completely defended, habitable in 
every season, .... surrounded with water and trees." " 80. 
His annual revenue he may receive from his whole dominion 
through his collectors ; but let him in this world observe the 
divine ordinances ; let him act as a father to his people." 

Is not the whole of this picture Celtic as well as Hindoo % 
and if these laws do not rule any more Hindostan, for how 
many ages did they not flourish ? The "Ramayana," I., 107, 
and III., 92, describes an Indian court filled with poets, pane- 
gyrists, Brahmins, and attendant officers of every description, 
and the whole of it almost could be transferred to Erin in the 
33 



496 



GENTILISM. 



brilliant times of her Ard Highs without violating an} 7 pro- 
priety. 

No doiibt many details of which we do not speak presented 
a very different aspect in each of the two countries ; the 
climate, the wealth, the internal commerce of the immense 
peninsula of Hindostan could not but offer a scene with which 
no Celtic country could compete ; but our object is to show 
that both were ruled primitively by the same patriarchal man- 
ners, and we tliihk we have said enough to prove it. 

A word on the two last Hindoo castes will complete the dem- 
onstration. 

The Yaiysia class was composed of merchants and agricul- 
turists. The merchants of India dealt certainly in richer com- 
modities than those of Celtic co\mtries. Yet it is very remark- 
able that in both cases their trade was altogether interior to the 
country ; they seldom ventured on ships of their own to 
foreign territories. The exterior trade of Hindostan, chiefly in 
the primitive ages, was, according to Heeren, altogether in the 
hands of Arabians and Phoenicians ; and it is well known that 
the same kind of commerce in the West of Europe was entirely 
carried on by Phoenicians, Carthaginians, the Greeks of Mas- 
silia, and later on the Scandinavians, never by the Celts them- 
selves. The coincidence is truly striking. 

"With respect to the agriculturists and graziers, the similarity 
is almost perfect. There is, on the subject, a most remarkable 
passage in Strabo's Geography (Book xv., Chap, i., § 49), which 
deserves certainly to be quoted. The author derived his infor- 
mation from the works composed by the companions of Alex- 
ander. That information was often unreliable, on account of 
the short time they had remained in the country, which did not 
allow them to understand perfectly the institutions of a people 
so different from the Greeks and even the Persians. But on 
the present occasion it was question only of facts, patent to all, 
and which they witnessed everywhere in the country. There 



APPENDIX I. 



497 



was no need of a 'deep study to .understand them ; eye-sight 
was all-sufficient. Strabo says : " The caste of husbandmen 
constitute the majority of natives ; and they are a most mild 
and gentle people, as they are exempted from military service, 
and cultivate their land free from alarm ; they do not resort to 
cities, either to transact private business or take part in public 
tumults. It therefore frequently happens that, at the same 
time, and in the same part of the country, one body of men 
are in battle array, and engaged in contests with the enemy, 
while others are ploughing or digging in security, having these 
soldiers to protect them." And the sixty-sixth section contains 
the following remarkable words : "Among some tribes the 
ground is cultivated by families and in common ; when the 
produce is collected, each takes what is sufficient for his sub- 
sistence during the year." Everybody has read exactly similar 
facts of old Erin. 

In Celtic countries the husbandmen, as all clansmen, might 
be called for military service, but this was, no doubt, the excep- 
tion : in general the chieftain was surrounded with his knights, 
his heroes, his nobles,' who fought when the agriculturist 
ploughed, sowed, and reaped. The remainder of the descrip- 
tion is perfect in its application to Western Europe in former 
times. 

What is said by Strabo of cities requires a short and general 
remark. There is no doubt that, even in primitive times, 
Hindostan differed considerably from the West of Europe in 
the number, extent, and wealth of her cities. But was there 
not a visible cause for this difference ? Could the first inhab- 
itants of Eastern India live apart in farm-houses, with the 
country swarming with ferocious animals and venomous ser- 
pents ? Was it not absolutely required of those who first 
settled in the country, to live in large groups for self-protec- 
tion ? Yet we see by the passage of Strabo just quoted that 
there was in -fact, for long ages, a disinclination in the people 



498 



GENTILISM. 



for city life, since in the time of Alexander's invasion the ma- 
jority of the natives did not resort to cities even to transact 
business, so much did they like country life. This preference 
continues even to this day, as all modern travellers have 
remarked. 

Another apparent dissimilarity must be briefly mentioned. 
We know that music had become in Celtic nations a State in- 
stitution, and that the fourth order of Druids was composed of 
the i)\ivr\TCLi. In Hindostan, on the contrary, the love of music 
was considered, according to the laws of Menu, as a vice to be 
discouraged as well as intemperance, gambling, etc. But the 
reas >\\ might be only the effect naturally produced on human 
passions by soft music in such a climate as that of the East 
Indies. That such was probably the case can be inferred from 
the fact that the whole Third Veda — the Samana — was com- 
posed of mantras and hrahmanas, to be sung by the officiating 
Brahmin. So that there was really in Hindostan a class of 
v\ivr]Tai as in the fourth order of Druids, and singing accom- 
panied probably with musical instruments composed a great 
part of the religious seiwice. To this day it is well known 
that, chiefly in the southern part of the great peninsula, where 
primitive usages have been less interfered with by the numer- 
ous foreign invasions, the processions, the religious festivals are 
always accompanied with deafening instruments, which may 
not be precisely agreeable to European tastes but which are 
said to produce real harmony for the devotees of Yishnu and 
of Chrishna ; and the Catholic Church had to allow the intro- 
duction of such orchestras in her temples. Of the Sudras and 
men of no caste, as Pariahs and Chandalas, the only thing 
our space allows us to say is, that they replaced in old Hindo- 
stan the class of slaves existing in ancient Celtic countries. But 
they were not properly slaves, so that strict slavery and even 
serfdom have never formed a part of the institutions of India 
— the same as among Celtic tribes. 



APPENDIX I. 



499 



It remains now to say a word of the greatest and less easily 
explained dissimilarity in the institutions of both countries. 
In Hindostan there were strict castes, which continue to this 
day, and oppose an almost insurmountable obstacle to the identi- 
fication of Hindoo manners with those of Europeans. This has 
never existed in Celtic countries. 

What was the origin of castes in Egypt and India? Have 
they been in force in those countries from the very beginning? 
It is difficult to answer these questions. It seems there were 
no strict castes in Hindostan when the Yedas were written. 
There is only a slight indication of them in one of the last 
prayers of the Atharvan Yeda, and it is conceded that this 
fourth part of the sacred Hindoo books is altogether of a dif- 
ferent class and later written than the three first. No castes 
in the Yedic period. But the " Institutes of Menu. " suppose 
them constantly. Their origin, consequently, must be placed in 
the interval between the composition of the three first Yedas 
and the publication of the Menu work. That interval is gener- 
ally supposed to have been of three hundred years, but it might 
have been more. 

It seems likewise that the Sanscrit word used for caste means 
literally " color ;" color consequently must have been the chief 
distinction at first ; it is well known that to this day the Brah- 
mins are nearly white and the Sudras of a very dark tint, al- 
though there are exceptions to this rule. This difference in 
color may have been in many cases, the result of their various 
pursuits in life, but sometimes also arose from their being of 
different race. It is generally supposed that the Pariahs, called 
Chandalas in many places, were originally a conquered race, re- 
duced to the state of outcasts rather than to that of slaves. 
The Institutes of Menu often attribute a sensible degradation 
in the human form to a simple mixture of^ class ; and perhaps 
the institution of castes may have arisen simply from the de- 
sire of keeping the blood of the nation pure. Hence the iin- 



500 



GENTTLISM. 



mense number of enactments in the Hindoo law to regulate all 
the details of marriage. It looks as if all the attention of the 
lawgiver was directed to that exclusiveness which is likewise 
so visible, in modern times, in the English nation, among whom 
the same result is obtained by native repugnance and not by 
legal enactments. 

In Celtic countries nothing of the kind existed, because the 
blood of the various septs was, supposed to be of equal purity ; 
hence the general features remained there merely clannish; in 
Hindostan they were impregnated with the exclusiveness of 
caste ; but we can easily understand that each may have con- 
tinued to be a primitive and patriarchal people, both having 
so many things in common that the remarkable difference in- 
troduced by the attention to purity of blood in one of them, 
may not have prevented them from living truly under primeval 
and in all other respects similar institutions. 



APPENDIX II. 

THE PATRIARCHAL ORIGIN OP SOCIETY PROVED BY THE HISTORY OF 
JURISPRUDENCE, OR ANCIENT LAW. 



APPENDIX II. 



THE PATRI ARC HAL ORIGIN OF SOCIETY PROVED BY THE HISTORY OP 
JURISPRUDENCE, OR ANCIENT LAW. 

The very remarkable work of Henry Sumner Maine on 
" Ancient Law," is a powerful confirmation of our conclusions 
from general history. It may be said to carry them up to the 
height of demonstration. For the fact of the same laws govern- 
ing all nations at their origin, and of their being evidently de- 
rived from the nature of the family, shows more conclusively 
that mankind began by clanship, than any amount of particular 
facts of history pointing to the same inference. Law is a 
most essential part of the life of nations, and proves what 
they were a great deal more strictly than any amount of par- 
ticular circumstances from their annals or traditions. On this 
account the book of Mr. Maine is of extreme importance, and 
will render an immense service to the cause of truth, at an 
epoch when the most subversive doctrines on the origin of 
man, and on the primitive institutions that governed him, are 
openly advocated. When people are fully aware that, every- 
where on earth, the first human societies were tribal, organized 
on the same pattern, and having the same laws ; they will con- 
clude naturally that mankind came from a single pair ; and 
when, moreover, these ancient laws are shown to be of such a 
character that those of old Rome and of modern England can 
be proved to be derived from them, it must be admitted that 
they were not made for barbarians. Yet this is the open ob- 
ject of the greatest part of the book on "Ancient Law " by 
Mr. Maine. 

There are considerations in the same work which it cannot 

(503) 



504 



GEKTILISM. 



be our purpose to discuss ; they are addressed to lawyers, and 
we are not the proper judge of them. Particularly the low 
opinion the author seems to entertain of " canon law " is start- 
ling for us, and runs counter to some of our most settled con- 
victions. The idea, likewise, that law did not come origi- 
nally from any fixed principles, but grew gradually from the 
decisions of kings or chieftains, who were alone invested with 
the judiciary power, seems to us opposed to the opinion of the 
greatest thinkers of all ages on the same subject. But, we re- 
peat it again, these discussions would be entirely foreign to 
our purpose ; and the author did not surely intend to adopt 
bluntly ideas sapping at the very foundation of any system of 
jurisprudence. He knew as well as any jurist of ancient or 
modern times that anteriorly to any law on earth there is the 
" eternal law " comprehending all the axioms of right, and 
without which all the decisions of judges would be either the 
blind stroke of fatality, or the irresponsible dictate of despot- 
ism. Mr. Maine intended probably to convey to his readers 
the exact doctrine on the subject when he said, that " When 
a king decided a dispute by a sentence, the judgment was as- 
sumed to be the result of direct inspiration. The divine agent, 
suggesting judicial awards to kings or to gods, the greatest of 
kings was Themis. The peculiarity of the conception is 
brought out by the use of the plural. Themistes, Themises, 
the plural of Themis, are the awards themselves, divinely dic- 
tated to the judge." Mr. Maine had thus found in Homer the 
right conception of the basis of law ; but he might have devel-. 
oped it with more details in the very first pages of his book, 
and thus he would have left nothing obscure on so important a 
subject. The "inspiration" of judges was but a metaphor. 

This, however, does not lie within the purpose of our own 
investigations ; but when the author of " Ancient Law '' comes 
to speak of what is really of interest to us, then there is scarcely 
any obscurity in his doctrine, and we have only to register down 



APPENDIX II. 



505 



what his great knowledge of the history of jurisprudence has 
found out, and left as a legacy to men less deeply informed. 
He seems even to us to intimate that his discovery- was ob- 
tained almost reluctantly, and could not be very popular, on 
account of the support it affords to Christian truth. On this 
subject his very words must be quoted from his fifth chapter : 
" The effect of the evidence derived from comparative juris- 
prudence is to establish that view of the primeval condition of 
the human race which is known as the Patriarchal Theory. 
There is no doubt, of course, that this theory was originally 
based on the Scriptural history of the Hebrew patriarchs in 
Lower Asia ; but its connection with Scripture rather militated 
than otherwise against its reception as a complete theory, since 
the majority of the inquirers who, till recently, addressed them- 
selves with most earnestness to the colligation of social phenom- 
ena, were either influenced by the strongest prejudice against 
Hebrew antiquities, or by the strongest desire to construct their 
systems without the assistance of religious records" — let our 
readers remark this naif acknowledgment, as a Frenchman 
would say : — " Even now there is perhaps a disposition to un- 
dervalue these accounts, or rather to decline generalizing from 
them, as forming part of the traditions of a Semitic people. It 
is to be noted, however, that the legal testimony comes nearly 
exclusively from the institutions of societies belonging to the 
Hindoo-European stock, the Romans, Hindoos, and Sclavo- 
nians supplying the greater part of it ; and indeed the diffi- 
culty, at the present stage of the inquiry, is to know where to 
stop, to say of what races of men it is not allowable to lay 
down that the society in which they are united was originally 
organized on the patriarchal model." 

This is certainly a very remarkable and comprehensive state- 
ment, which, in fact, would suffice for our purpose, and allow 
us to consider our conclusions on the subject as perfectly dem- 
onstrated. Yet it will become of a more satisfactory character 



506 



GENTILISM. 



still by entering into some details, and following the author of 
" Ancient Law " in his very interesting discussion ; allowing 
ourselves; however, the liberty of appending our remarks when 
occasion shall require. 

The description given first, of a patriarchal family, accord- 
ing to Holy Scripture, is so well-known that it needs not being 
reported in extenso : The eldest male parent absolutely supreme 
over his children as over his slaves ; the relations of sonship 
and serfdom scarcely differing beyond the capacity of the child 
in bloc J becoming one day the head of a family; the posses- 
sions of the father held in a representative rather than in a 
proprietary character, equally divided at his death among his 
children — the eldest son receiving a double share under the 
name of birthright ; finally, the State or commonwealth orig- 
inating from the family either by the separation of two chil- 
dren of the same father forming two nations, as Jacob and 
Esau ; or the families of all the children of the same father 
becoming one people, as it happened with respect to Jacob's 
posterity. Let us see, for the sake of comparison, what the 
history of other nations, outside of Judaism, tells us of their 
origin ; and here we must render the very words of Mr. Maine. 
After having quoted three lines from the Odyssey of Homer, 
he comments upon them : 

*" These verses condense in themselves the sum of the hints 
which are given us by legal authorities. Men are first seen 
distributed in perfectly insulated groups, held together by 
obedience to the parent. Law is the parent's word, but it is 
not yet in the condition of those themistes which were analyzed 
in the first chapter of this work. When we go forward to the 
state of society in which these early legal conceptions show 
themselves as formed, we find that they still partake of the 
mystery and spontaneity which must have seemed to character- 
ize a despotic father's commands, but that at the same time, 
inasmuch as they proceed from a Sovereign, they presuppose a 



APPENDIX II. 



507 



union of family groups in some wider organization. The next 
question is, What is the nature of this union and the degree of 
intimacy which it involves ? It is just here that archaic law 
renders us one of the greatest of its services, and fills up a gap 
which otherwise could only have been bridged by conjecture. 
It is full, in all its provinces, of the clearest indications that 
society in primitive times was not what it is assumed to be at 
present, a collection of individuals. In fact, and in view of 
the men who composed it, it was an aggregation of families. 
The contrast may be most forcibly expressed by saying that the 
unit of an ancient society was the Family, of a modern society 
the Individual. We must be prepared to find in ancient law 
all the consequences of this difference." 

Mr. Maine then shows how far these " consequences " went ; 
and particularly how the moral elevation and the moral debase- 
ment of the individual appear to be confounded with, or post- 
poned to, the merits and offenses of the group to which the 
individual belongs ; and he . pretends that " one step in the 
transition from the ancient and simple view of the matter to 
the theological and metaphysical explanation of later days, is 
marked by the early Greek notion of an inherited curse." Holy 
Scripture is as emphatic on this subject as any " early Greek 
notion," and we see clearly in the Bible that in the various 
primitive societies there described, the unit was not the Indi- 
vidual, but the Family ; and, consequently, " the hints given us 
by legal authorities," in this regard, are exactly reproduced in 
Holy Scripture ; but it is not perfectly exact to say that " the 
ancient and simple view of the matter " differed in the least 
from " the theological and metaphysical explanation of later 
days," since it is perfectly clear to an attentive reader of anti- 
quity that the higher we go in it the stronger we find 
those " theological and metaphysical explanations," or rather 
suggestions ; so that the " notion of an inherited curse " is not 
" one step down in the transition " from the ancient to the 



508 



GENTILISM. 



more recent, but, in fact, is the very starting-point from which 
all the following " consequences " were derived. But apart 
from this observation which the interests of truth required of 
us, the statements of Mr. Maine are perfectly fair and certainly 
full of a deep interest. We do not know of any other author 
who has analyzed so exactly this feature of all ancient societies, 
and a few sentences which we must yet quote are certainly very 
remarkable, although the text itself alone can give a true idea of 
the whole. " Corporations," he says, " never die, and accordingly 
primitive law considers the entities with which it deals, i.e., the 
patriarchal or family group, as perpetual and inextinguishable. 
This view is closely allied to the peculiar aspect under which, 
in very ancient times, moral attributes present themselves. . . . 
... If the community sins, its guilt is much more than the 
sum of the offenses committed by its members ; the crime is a 
corporate act, and extends in its consequences to many more 
persons than have shared in its actual perpetration. If, on the 
other hand, the individual is conspicuously guilty, it is his 
children, his kinsfolk, his tribesmen, or his fellow-citizens, who 
suffer with him, and sometimes for him." 

This short passage throws a flood of light on many points of 
the early history of mankind, and of the Jewish people, con- 
tained in the Bible. It gives a full answer to many objections 
against several passages of the Pentateuch in particular, and 
thus the " holy " indignation of "Voltaire and his imitators 
against the destruction of some Canaanite tribes in Palestine, 
is proved to be merely an effect of the profound ignorance of 
the notorious French writer with regard to antiquity of any 
kind, but particularly to religious antiquity. 

But the work of Mr. Maine ought to be read attentively in 
that part of his fifth chapter where he treats of the old Greek, 
and chiefly Roman Jurisprudence. To many a student of law 
the Roman code particularly is full of obscurity on many 
points ; and the commentaries of the beet jurists have scarcely 



APPEKDIX II. 



509 



helped, until this time, to clear up some of the chief difficul- 
ties. Mr. Maine has, therefore, rendered an immense service 
.to those who wish to have a clear view of the laws of Rome, 
which are always, after all, at the bottom of modem legal en- 
actments. But in our eyes the service he has rendered to 
ancient history, and consequently to the vindication of the 
right principles concerning human origin and primitive man- 
ners, is yet far more to be appreciated and gratefully acknowl- 
edged. We cannot render justice to this part of his work by 
a few quotations ; yet it is impossible not to mention some of 
the chief traits of the discussion. 

" In most of the Greek States," he says, " and in Rome, 
there long remained the vestiges of an ascending series of 
groups, out of which the State was at first constituted. The 
Family, House, and Tribe of the Romans may be taken as the 
type of them, and they are so described to us that we can 
scarcely help conceiving them as a system of concentric circles 
which have gradually expanded from the same point. The 
elementary group is the Family, connected by common subjec- 
tion to the highest male ascendant. The aggregation of 
Families form the Gens, or House. The aggregation of Houses 
makes the Tribe. The aggregation of Tribes constitutes the 
Commonwealth. Are we at liberty to follow these indications, 
and to lay down that the commonwealth is a collection of per- 
sons united by common descent from the progenitor of an 
original family ? Of this we may, at least, be certain, that all 
ancient societies regarded themselves as having proceeded from 
one original stock, and even labored under an incapacity for 
comprehending any reason, except this, for their holding to- 
gether in political union." 

The author then proceeds to show how adoption came in to 
replace those members of the State who had either abandoned 
it or been expelled from it ; but adoption itself confirmed the 
universal idea of the- family, as it was merely an extension of 



510 GENTILISM. 

it by mere incorporation. From this he explains the origin of 
aristocracies, mnch more clearly and rationally than Yico ever 
did in his Scienza JYuova ; but these various branches of the 
subject not being of paramount importance in our actual inves- 
tigations, we cannot follow Mr. Maine in his learned discussions. 
"We cannot, even, do any justice to his high philosophical views 
of the constitution of the ancient family in Rome, a subject 
so important to us. He shows that, " older, probably, than the 
House and the Tribe, it left traces of itself on private law 
long after the House and the Tribe had been forgotten, and 
long after consanguinity had ceased to be associated with the 
composition of States. It will be found to have stamped it- 
self on all the great departments of jurisprudence, and may be 
detected, I think, as the true source of many of their most 
important and most durable characteristics." 

But it is chiefly in the long discussion on the P atria Po- 
testas, and on the nature of Agnation and Cognation among 
the Romans, that Mr. Maine explains the whole constitution of 
the Family as it was understood in Rome, with, the successive 
variations of the idea, as it was modified by circumstances, 
and particularly by the conquests of the republic, and the an- 
nexation of many countries to which was gradually extended 
the right of citizenship. We cannot attempt to analyze this 
learned and brilliant generalization ; we would but spoil it ; and 
it ought to be read in the booh itself. But no stronger proof 
could be given of the truth advocated in GentiUsm, that in 
primitive times the family tie is seen everywhere as the first 
constituent element of tribes and nations. No one, certainly, 
before Mr. Maine, had showed so clearly its influence over all 
the state and social institutions of Rome ; and no one expected 
before the appearance of his book, to see the patriarchal state 
of society as influencing so powerfully the most extensive, 
rational, consistent, and admirable system of jurisprudence that 
has ever been planned by the genius of man, at any time of the 



APPENDIX II. 



511 



world's history. For the boast of the Latin poet, that the dis- 
tinctive mark of Rome was to govern the world, Tu regere im- 
jperio populos (iEn. vi., 851), referred evidently more to her 
laws than to her armies ; and every one is aware how far the 
modern codes of all European nations are impregnated with 
the maxims of the Roman jurisprudence. 

The only thing to which we feel constrained to object is the 
very few words Mr. Maine thinks proper to write in dispi'aise 
of canon- law, chiefly on the subject of marriage. But the 
learned author 6hows the small importance he attached here to 
his observations by the off-hand way he speaks of it, and the 
care he takes not to attempt any discussion of it. This dis- 
crepancy of our views, with his own, does not affect, in the 
least, the opinion we entertain of the author's merit with 
regard to the origin and history of law. It is true that in his 
book the details he gives concern chiefly Rome ; and it was 
most important he should do so, since no one before had seen 
so clearly the patriarchal origin of Roman law ; but here and 
there he alludes to the Hindoos, the Sclavonians, and the Celts, 
and the few remarks he makes on the subject of those nations 
are always most forcible and clear. He could speak of Hin- 
dostan with authority, as he had been for a number of years " a 
member of the Supreme Council of India ; " and his profound 
knowledge, not only of jurisprudence, but also of history, en- 
titles him to be listened to when speaking of those subjects. 
Consequently, although he develops his ideas chiefly with 
respect to one great nation, he must be believed when he says 
that " the difficulty, at the present stage of the inquiry, is to 
know where to stop, to say of what races of men it is not 
allowable to lay down that the society in which they are united 
was originally organized on the patriarchal model." 

Although this work on "Ancient Law " has already passed 
through five editions in London and three in the United States, 
it had not been our good fortune to meet with it before Gen- 
34 



512 



GEWTILISM. 



tilism was more than half in types. We could not hut rejoice 
at this new confirmation of previous well-settled ideas, and at 
the opportunity offered us to refer to it at the end of this 
volume. 



INDEX. 



A. 

Absorption in God. 

Leading to pantheism, 148. 
Academic School. See Plato. 
JSschylus. 

Did not understand the myth of 
Prometheus, 395. 

Obscured noble traditions by his 
polytheism, ibid. 

Hio-h moral doctrines of. 401, sq. 

Opposed to Pericles' innovations, 402 

Favorable to antiquity, 402, 403. 

Doctrine of, on expiation, 403-407. 

On transmission of sin, 406, 407. 

On contrition, ibid. 

On the law of suffering, 412-415. 

Admitted a Supreme God, 413. 
Agni. See Devatas. 
Ahura Mazda. 

Why the Supreme God was called 
in Bactria, not Brahma, 181, 182. 

Attributes of. 183, 184. 
Allofhylian Race, See Races. 
Amun. 

The most ancient temple of, was at 
JMeroe in Ethiopia, 227. 

The God of all Africa, ibid. 

Had no human history, ibid. 

Belief in. of great antiquity, 228. 

No obscene emblem connected with 
the worship of, 229. 

A part of the culture of Egypt de- 
rived from the worship ot, 229, 
230. 

Was not Amun-Ra, 231. 

The Supreme God of Africa and of 

India, ibid. 
Meant " hidden," 232. 
Could not be the visible universe, 

233. 

Identified with Brahma, 233. 

The idea of, degraded by subsequent 
superstition, 263, 264. 

Grandeur of the myth of, 264. 

The myth of, obscured by myth- 
ology, 329. 



Amun-Ra. 

The origin of idolatry in Egypt, 252. 
Animal Worship. 

Not a part of primeval religion, 259, 
260. 

Explained by the introduction of 
pantheism in India and Egypt, 
260, 261. 

No sign of, on old monuments in 
Egypt, 261, 262. 

Dating from the last Egyptian dy- 
nasties, ibid. 

Strange examples of, 262, 263. 

Proofs of. lately discovered. 263. 

Prevalent in Egypt, Greece, Syria, 
etc., 357. 

In Indostan, 171. 
Antiquity op Mast. 

Pretended proof of, in Egypt, Pref. 
v, note. 

Reconcilable with the Bible, 63, 64. 

Various estimates of, 76, 77. 

Calculations on, unreliable, 77, 73. 

Not proved from the stone period, 81. 

Not proved from the drift, 85, 86. 

Disproved from the drift, 87, sq. 
Apollo. See Myths. 
Arabians. 

Primitive religion of',scarcely known, 
437. 

The, were at first monotheists, 443. 
Architecture of India. 

First examples of, 158, 159, 166. 

Oldest monuments of, 167. 

At Ellora, subsequent, 168. 

In Egypt, various styles, 261, 262. 

The most primitive, the best, 281, 
262. 
Archytas. 

Correspondence of Plato with, 375- 
380. 
Arhiman. 

Opposed to Mithra, 191. 

Not without the read) of Ormuzd 169 
Aryan Migrations. 

Identified with Japhetic migrations, 
273. 

(513) 



514 



INDEX. 



Aryan Races. See Races. 
Asshtjr. 

The chief God in Assyria, 441. 
Identified with the II of Chaldaea, 
ibid. 
Assyrians. 

Originally monotheists, 440, 441. 
No pantheism originally among the, 
442. 

Athene. See Myths. 
Avatars. 

Origin of the idea of, 165. 

The, of Vishnu in opposition to Siva- 
ism, 16G. 

Epoch of the, 167, 168. 



B. 

Babel, Tower of. 

Ruins of, yet in existence, 42-44. 
The best explanation of ihe multi- 
tude of languages, 45, 46. 
At. pride punished by division, 56. 
A proof of primitive civilization 260. 
Not the starting-point, of migrations, 

275. ' 
Barbarism. 

Not the first state of man Pref. ix. 
Not the index of the clan system, 52. 
Not the result of want of comfort, 

but of moral degradation, 67, 68. 
Concluded from a parte facts. 62. 
The use of stone no sign of, 69. 
Not proved by western tacts, 75. 
The supposed unconsciousness of, a 

false supposition, 98, 99. 
Not the consequence of the want of 

the writing art, 100. • 
No mention of, in Central Asia, 

under Zoroaster, 201. 
Of Grecian tribes caused by the 

hardships of migration, 278, 279. 
Of Heroic Greece. See Heroic Greece. 
Clanship no proof of, in Greece, 3 19.&2 
Disproof of, in Greece, 325. 
The Greek drama no proof of, 325, 

326. 

Supposed, of the Turanians, 45S, 459. 
Of the Turanians derived from the 

curse, 460. 
Real, of the Turanians disproved, 

463. 

Disproved by the whole of Gentil- 

ism, 475, 476. 
Reduced to the law of degeneracy, 

476. 



Brahma. 
The male, a modern invention, 137 
138. 

The neuter, really the Supreme, 139. 

Anterior to creation, 140. 

Had many names. 140, 141. 

Called Varuna, 141. 

Called Dyaus, 143. 

Meaning of this name of, 144. 

Absorption in, 147. 
Brahmanas. See Vedas. 
Bronze Age. See Periods. 
Buddhism. 

Origin of, 156. 

Really idolatrous for the common 

people, 157, 161. 162. 
Connected with Sivaism, 158, 159. 

Sway of, ibid. 

Advocacy of charity and other vir- 
tues in, 160, 161. 

Hold of, on the people. 162. 

Advocacy of atheism and annihila- 
tion in, 163. ' 

The Athenians had nothing to do 
with, 279. 



C. 

Castes. 

In Hindostan were at first only 
classes, 115. 

Intermarriage allowed between va- 
rious, ibid. 

In Egypt, 245. 

The, of both countries alike, 245, 
246. 

In Hindos"tan analogous to social 
classes in Celtic countries, 489- 
498. 

Origin of, in India and Egypt, 499, 
500. 

Central Asia. See Mazdeism. 

ChALD/EANS. 

The, were Cushites, 438. 
Clanship early destroyed among, 
ibid. 

Monotheism among, 439, 440. 
Rapid decline of religion among 

the. 440. 
Chinese. 

Buddhism not the original religion 

of the, 446. 
Confucius' system atheistic, 467, 468. 
Lao-tseu alone kept some principles 

of primeval religion among,468 sq. 
Piimeval religion of, as expressed 

in the Tao te-king, 470, sq. 



INDEX. 



515 



Primeval religion of, not discon- 
nected from that of other ancient 
nations, 488, sq. 

Some type of the Trinity among, 
471. 

Monotheism of, ibid. 

Philosophy of, analogous to that of 
India, 473. 

Patriarchal manners of, 474. 
Chronology. 

Of the Bible elastic, Pref. v. 

Of ancient nations no more an ob- 
jection, Pref. vi. 
Clanship. 

Mankind began by, 36-39, 57, 429. 

Not barbarism, 39, 40. 

Inducing division, 52, 57. 

Inducing religious schism, 53. 

In India at the time of Alexander, 
113, 114 

Strict, had existed in India from the 

beginning, 114-116. 
Proved in India by the organization 

of villages, 116, 117. 
Eeplaced by empire in India, 169, 

170. 
In Egvpt, 258. 
Proved by Strabo. 258. 259. 
In Greece, 315-319. 
No barbarism in Grecian, 319, 320. 
In primitive times did not suppose 

disintegration, 429, 430. 
No, anciently among most of the 

Semitic races, 438. 
See Patriarchal Society. 
Climate. 

A source of division, 53, 54. 
Cuhu. See Devatas. 



D. 

Deluge; 

Indicated by the facts of the quar- 

ternary period, 81-83. 
Admitted by scientists, 83, 84. 
Design. 

Apparent . in Holy Scriptures, 

15, sq. 
Devatas. . 

Were the, gods ? 133. ¥ 

Were Agui, Cuhu, Indra, all gods? 

133, 134. 

The meaning of the Hindoo, ex- 
plained by the Eites of the Catho- 
lic Church, 135, 136. 

The same as the devas of Zoroaster, 
181, 184. 



The consecration of, in Mazdeism the 
same as in the Catholic Church, 
185. 

DODONA. 

Oracle of, established by the Pelas- 

gians, 282. 
Priestesses of the oracle of, 285. 
Drift. 
Phenomena of, 72. 
The remains of man found only in 

the, 77. 

The, no proof of a great autiquity 

for man, 85, 86. 
Dualism. . 

In the religion of Zoroaster. See 

Zarathustra and Mazdeism. 
The pretended, of Zoroaster a real 

argument against atheists, 194, 

195. 

DURGA. 

Female energy of Siva, 173. 



E. . 

Earth. 

The, according to Scripture, 3, sq. 
Suspended in space, 8. 
Spherical, 9. 

The atmosphere of the, 10. 

The ocean of the, 11, 12. 

The seas of the, as highways, 18, sq. 

The mountains of the, 21, 22. 

The configuration of the, a subse- 
quent source of division, 50,431,^. 
Egypt. 

The land of mystery, 205. 

The mystery of, cleared up by our 
knowledge of India, 206, 207. 
Egyptians. 

To what race did the, belong? 292, 
203. 

The, civilized from the start, 203, 
204. 

Date of the origin of, 204, 205. 

Several kinds of alphabets and writ- 
ings among the, 206, 207. 

Ancient authors' o inion about the 
doctrine of the, 224, 233. 

The, doctrine contained the beliei 
in creation, 224, 225, 235. 236. 

The belief in the immortality of the 
soul, 225, 236. 

The belief in one God, ibid. 

What Christian writers thought of 
the, doctrine. 225, 226, 233, 234. 

The religion of the ancient, monothe- 
istic, 226, 227, 238. 



516 



INDEX. 



The monotheism of the, proved by 

the monuments, 234, 235. 
The, believed in a judgment after 

death, 236, 237. 
Opinion of Mariette on the, 239. 
Origin of pantheism among the. 240. 
Decline of religion among the, 241, 

242, sq. 250-252. 
Identity of God and the world in 

the subsequent, doctrine, 241, 242. 
Doctrine of transmigration among 

the, 243. 

Differences of character between the, 

and the Hindoos, 246. 
Pantheism, idolatry, etc., of the. 

See Religion. 
Esoteric religion among the, 265. 
Coarseness of the religion of the, 

206. 267. 
Religion deteriorating, 207, 268. 
Religion becoming unintelligible, 

263, 269. 

Religion exemplified by the funeieal 
ritual, 269. 

Decline of, religion cause of national 
degeneracy, 269, 270. 

Doctrine contained in Plato. 297,298. 

The crudest idolatry taught by the 
Egyptian books, 350, sq. 
Esoteric Doctrine. 

What we know of the, of the Egyp- 
tians, 237. 

Knowledge of the Supreme God a, 
among Egyptians, 239. 

What Eusebius taught of the, of 
Egypt, 251. 

Often puerile in Egypt, 265, 266. 
Ethiopia. 

The great seat of the worship of 
Amun. 227. 

The oriiiin of a part of the civiliza- 
tion of Egypt, 229, 230. 
Europe. 

The population of, came from Asia, 
272, 273. 
Evolution. 

2Jot proved for man, Pref. viii. 

As taught by Moses, 14. 

Of language, 28. 

Consequences of, 36-38. 

Disproved by geology, 61. 

Opposed to science, 8S, 89. 

Disproved by history, 347. 348. 

Disproved by the necessity of the 
supernatural. See Supernatural. 
Expiation. 

Doctrine of .ZEschylus on, 403, sq. 



Harsh doctrines on, in Heroic Greece 
403-407. 

Some crimes thought to be incapa- 
ble of, 404-406, 410, sq. 

Modification of the Old Testament 
doctrine on, 4l0, 411. 



Female Deities. 

Origin of, in India, 173. 

No, originally in the creed of any 

nation, 243. 
Origin of, in Egjpt, 254. 
Foot-Pan. 

The foot-pan of Amasis, a proof of 
the strict idolatry of the ancients, 
348-350. 



G. 

Gathas. 

Oldest books of the Zends, 178, 183, 
185. 
Gayatry. 

More eminent than any other devo- 
tion, 134. 
Definition of the, ibid. 
Greece, Heroic. 

Thought to have been barbarous, 
312. 

From what authors a true picture 
of, can be obtained, 313-315. 

In, no republics existed but mon- 
archies, 317, 318. 

In, real clanship prevailed, 318, 319. 

Description of a house in, 322. 

Farm labor in, 323. 

Metals in the houses of, 323. 

The principles imbibed in, the chief 
cause of resistance to subsequent 
corruption, 334. 

Differences between, and subsequent 
* Hellas, 365, 386. 
Greece. 

The first population of, came from 

Central Asia. 275. 276. 
No priesthood in, 310. 
Rapid Recline of pure doctrine in, 

326. 

Decline of morality in, caused by 

idolatry, 345. 
Last stage of religion in, 351, 352, 

357. 

National disruption introduced by 
religion in, 353, 354. 



INDEX. 



517 



Culture reconcilable with supersti- 
tion in, 361. 

National disintegration in, 431- 
433. 
Greeks. 

Called Javans in Scripture, Javanas 

in Sanscrit, 274, 275. 
The, had not the Vedas. 276. 
The, had an alphabet, ibid. 
The language of the, modified by 

the tribes through which they 

travelled, 276, 277. 
Hardships encountered by the, in 

their migrations, 277, 278. 
The migration of the, misunder- 
stood by the author of " India in 

Greece," 278, 279. 
The, derived from the Pelasgians, 

281. 

Monotheism of the, anterior to phi- 
losophy, 283, 284. 

The, not traditionalists, 298, 299,300. 
Degeneracy of the, in religious 
doctrine, 309. 



H. 

Hamittc Race. See Races. 
Heavens. 

Light of the, 4, 5, sq. 

Stars in the, 6. 

Meteorology of the, 7. 
Hebrews. 

Providential mission of the, 56. 

The, placed at the centre of the Old 
World, 56. 

Monotheism of the, peculiar to them, 
445, 446. 

Excellence of the name of God 

among the, 446, 447. 
Meaning of the tetragrammaton 

among the, ibid. 
All the divine attributes derived 

from it among the, 447, 448. 
The, inclined to idolatry not to pan- 
theism, 448. 
The worship of God among the, 

placed under the guardianship of 

love, 448, 449. 
The, no more subject to ridicule, 450. 
Influence of the religion of the, over 

powerful nations, 451-454. 
Influence of the religion of the, over 

surrounding nations, 454-457. 
Hellas. See Greece. 
Hellenes. See Greeks. 



Hermetic Books. 

What were the? 211, 212. 
Enumerated by Clement of Alexan- 
dria, 212,213. 
Were the Vedas of Egypt, 214. 
How did the, perish, 214, 215. 
False, 215. 

The, supposed divine, 216. 

Two kinds of, 216, 217. 

Attributed to Thoth, ibid. 

False Neoplatonist, 217-219. 

False Christian, ibid. 

Time of appearance of the false, 220. 

The false, contained something of 
the genuine, 221. 

Christian false, in particular, 226. 

Reliability of the, 244. 

Perhaps came from India, 248-250. 

The, literature has the characters 
of the Orphic literature in Greece, 
288, 289. 
Herodotus. 

Reliable as an historian, 315. 

Strabo's appreciation of, ibid. 

Description of the primitive state 
of Europe and Asia by, 316, 317. 

A witness of the mining art in his 
time, 324. 
Hieroglyphs. 

Different kinds of, 207-209. 

Not likely to give information on 
the Egyptian religion, 208-211. 

Later than idolatry, 210. 

Supposed alphabet in the, 210, 211. 
Hindoo Institutions. 

Analogous to those of Celtic coun- 
tries, 489-498. 
Hindoo Philosophy. 

The Mimansa and Vedanta of, nearly 
free of error, 154. 

Pantheism advocated in the Sank- 
hya of, ibid. 
. The Yoga of, 156. 

Buddhist atheism originating from 
the Sankhya of, 157. 

The source of many religions in 
Asia, 182. 
Hindoo Religion. 

Deteriorating, 153, 159, 160. 

Passing from monotheism to pan- 
theism, 151-155. 

Passing to idolatry, 164. 

Morally degraded," 166, 170-173. 

General view of, 176. 

Individualism in, 176, 177. 

Coincidence of the, with the Egyp- 
tian, 241-244. 



518 



INDEX. 



The doctrine of Universal Soul the 
chief cause of pantheism in, 260. 

Modern, coarse and vulgar, 266. 

The source of all the religions of 
Asia, 182. 
Historians in India. 

No, at first sight, 164. 

Epic poets real, 164, 165. 
Homa. See Soma. 
Homer. 

Reliable for facts, 313, sq. 

Strabo's appreciation of, ibid. 

Description of the heroic age in, 316. 

Cities in the heroic age in, 319, 320. 

Not iu opposition to Hesiod, 321, 
322. 

Description of houses in, 322-324. 

Doubts about the existence of, 332. 

Cause of the belief iu the anthropo- 
morphism of the gods, 332, sq. 

Possible cause of the alteration of 
the religious language of the 
Greeks, 310, 311. 
Human Society, Primitive. 

At first parcelled in small groups, 
' 51, 52. 

The same in India at the time of 

Alexander, 112. 
The same in Mazdeism, 200, 201. 
The same in Egypt, 256, sq. 
Of a high grade of civilization at 

the beginning, 250, 260. 
See Patriarchal Society. 

I. 

Idolatry. 

Origin of, 109, 110. 
Origin of, in India, 1G5. 
First confined to Sivaism, 166. 
Vishnu, more recent, 166, 167. 
Not introduced by loug poems in 

Egypt, 253. 
Poems connected with, in Egvpt, 

253, 254, 256. 
Origin of art in Egypt, 254. 
In Egypt offers the gods in groups, 

254. 

Presents female deities as in Hin- 
dostan, 254, 255. 

Local as to the worship of particu- 
lar gods, 255. 

In Greece caused by Homer, 332, sq. 

Reconcilable with refinement in In- 
dia, Egypt, Greece, 335, 336. 

What kind of refinement was 
brought on by, 3S6, 837. 



Not sufficiently opposed by philoso- 
phers, 337. 

In Greece as a source of art, 338, 339. 

Source of the nude in art, 340-342. 

Imitation of the gods in, a source of 
immorality, 344, 345. 

Strict, in Egypt under Amasis, 348- 
350. 

Theory of Iamblichus on, 350. 

Theory of Apuleius on, 351. 

The crudest, proclaimed by Hermes 

Trismegistus, 351, 352. 
Origin of female deities in, 173. 
Before, God was known to be u^zvo- 

Muc, 243. 
Origin of female deities in the, of 

Egypt, 254. 
Open flood-tide of, in Greece and 

Italy, 423-425. 
Incarnations. 

Oi isrin of the belief in, in India, 165, 

166. 

When, were imagined, 167, 168. 
See Avatars. 
Individualism. 
Cause of, in religion in Greece, 358, 
359. 

In Rome, 359, 360. 

Source of superstition, ibid. 

Embracing atheism and supersti- 
tion at the same time, ibid. 

Addicted to dream and the consulta- 
tion of oracles, 360, 361. 
. In Greece, 433, 434. 

In modern times, 434, "435. 
■Indra. See Devatas. 
Io. 

Myth of, see Myths. 
Italic School. See Pythagoras and 
Plato 

J. 

Javans. See Greeks. 
Jupiter. 

Original belief of the Romans on 
the subject of, 304, 305. 



K. 

Kings. 
Of China. See Chinese. 



L. 

Language. 

One at first, 27, 29, note. 



INDEX. 



519 



Not evolved, 28. 

Difference of, fostering division, 42, 
43, 45. 

Origin of sacred and popular, 44. 
No "tribe without, 99. 
Egyptian, 207, 208, sj. 
A multitude of, in the country con- 
necting Europe with Asia, 276,277. 

LlNGAM. 

First appears in Buddhist and Siva- 

ist temples, 158. 
Lucretius. 

The work of, an exception in Latin 

poetry, 419, 420. 



M. 

Magians. 

The obscurity of the doctrine of the, 
removed in great part, 197. 
Magic. 

Of the Tantras, 174, 175. 
Of Greece and Rome, 352, 353. 
Mahabharata. See Poetry and 

Idolatry. 
.Man. 

Adaptability of, to the whole globe, 
17, 18. 

. Unity of species in, 26. 

Unity of language for, 27, sg. 
Primitive, better known by history 
than bv zoology or geology, 106- 
108. 
Manetho. 

The dynasties of, not all successive, 
257. 
Manicheism. 

Not the offspring of Mazdeism, 196. 
Mantras. See Vedas. 
Mazdeism. 

Free at first from dualism, 189. 
Dualism suspected to have been con- 
tained in, 189. 
Real dualism introduced only much 

later on, 189, 190, 196. 
Reasons for not admitting dualism 

m primitive, 190. 191. 
Dualism contradictory to other doc- 
trines of, 191-193: 
No real dualism in, 194. 
The true, only antagonistic to athe- 
ism, 195. 

Had nothing common with Mani- 
cheism, 196, 197. 
Other exalted doctrines contained 
1 in, 197. 

Decline of, 198-200. 



Never passed to idolatry, 199. 

The worship of fire in, was only 
emblematical, 200. 

See Zarathustra. 
Menu Code. 

On creation, 149. 

On marriage, 121-123. 

Ou chastity, 123, 124. 

On transmigration, 149. 

No doctrine of absorption in the,150. 

On pure love, 151. 

Highly poetical, 164. 
Metals. 

Used in Heroic Greece, 323-325. 

Always in use in Africa, 67. 
Migration. 

Of Aryan Races. See Aryan Mi- 
gration. 

Of Celts, 274. 

Of Teutons, ibid. 

Of Greeks and Italians, ibid. 

Of Slavonic tribes, ibid. 

Of Medes, Persians, etc., ibid. 

Hardships of Hellenic, 277, 278. 
Mimansa Philosophy. See Hindoo 

Philosophy. 
Miracles. 

Are the best explanation )f many 
facts, 41. 

MlTHRA. 

Opposed to Ahriman, 191. 
Character of, 192. 

Sublimity of the personality of, 197, 

198. 
Monotheism. 

Of the Hebrews, 110. 

Of the Hebrews to be distinguished 

from that of other nations, 445- 

449. 

Universal at first, 111. 
Acknowledged as the religion of 

primitive India, 125, 126. 
In Greece anterior to philosophy, 

283, 284, 305. 
In Central Asia. See Mazdeism and 

Zends. 
In Egypt. See Amun. 
In the Greek poets, 413-418. 
In Chaldeea, 439, 440. 
In Assyria, 441. 
In Phoenicia, 442, 443. 
In Semitic races, 444, 445. 
Among the Turanians, 471, 472. 
Morality. 

Of the primitive Indians, 118-121. 
For youth in the same country, 123, 

124. 



520 



INDEX. 



In Mazdeism, 200. 
In Heroic Greece. See Heroic Greece. 
The causes of a harsh moral doc- 
trine in Heroic Greece, 403-407. 
Mysteries. 

Instituted in Greece by Orpheus and 

Pythagoras, 294. 
At first promotive of good morals, 
294, 295. 
Myths. 

Original, degraded into fables in 

Esypt, 263. 
Noble, of Amun, 264. 
Of Apollo and Athene, 389, 390. 
Of Prometheus, 394, 395. 
Of Prometheus understood of Adam, 

396, 397. 

Of Prometheus understood of Christ, 

397-401. 
Of Io, 400, 401. 
Of Phaeton, 299. 
Mythology. 

Idolatrous, alluring to the Greets, 
300. 

Meaning of the word myth, 328. 
Historical, source of error, 329. 
Physical phenomena turned iuto,330. 
Multiplicity of gods the result of the 

multiplicity of fables in, ibid. 
History turned into, cause of the 

apotheosis of men, 331. 
Only four centuries old at the time 

of Herodotus, 331, 332. 
Anthropomorphism of the gods 

through, 333-335. 
Anterior to and cause of idolatry, 

332, 333. 

Anthropomorphism in, not derived 
from the belief in the Incarnation, 
333. 

Anthropomorphism in Greek, infe- 
rior to the Avatars of Vishnu, ibid. 

Not the source of the culture of the 
Greeks, 334, 335, sq: 

Localized and confused, 354-356. 

Greek, compared to the Egyptian, 
356, 357. 



N. 

National Religion. 

Introduced everywhere by panthe- 
ism and idolatry, 353, 354. 

Introduced in Greece by Homer, 354. 

Tending always to become local, 
354, 355, sq. 



Disappearing entirely to become 

local, 355, 356. 
In Greece, at last completely local, 

426. 
Nationality. 

Never compact in Greece, 426, 

427. 

Whv, was not compact in Greece, 

427-429. 
In modern times, 430. 
Neoplatonism. 
Chief object of, 219. 
The origin of the false Hermetic 

books, 215-220. 
General scope of, 221-223. 
Nirvana. 

Last result of Hindoo philosophy, 

157. 

The consequence of the belief in 

transmigration, 149. 
In Buddhism, 160-163. 

NOMES. 

Meaning of the word, 257. 
Number of, in Egypt, ibid. 
Hostile to each other, 258. 
Nude Forms. 

Originating with the Greeks from 

their mythology, 340. 
Rejected by all ancient nations, 340 

341. 

Love for, spread by the Greeks 
among other nations, 342. 



O. 

Ocellus Lucanus. 

Was a lawgiver as well as a philoso- 
pher, 380. 
Ormdzd. See Ahura Mazda. 
Orpheus. 

Sacred image of, 282. 

A Pelasgian, 285. 

Fabulous history of, ibid. 

An Aryan, at least had come from 
the East, 286. 

Ideas of the ancients with respect 
to, 286, 287. 

The doctrine of, Vedic, 287. 

Connected with other Vedic person- 
ages, 287, 288. 

Literature from, objected to, 288. 

Literature from, has the same char- 
acter as the Hermaic, 288, 289. 

Examples of literature from, shows 
it to be Vedic, 289, 290; and Eg^«p- 
tian, 291, 293. 



INDEX. 



521 



The literature from, older than 1 
Pythagoras, 292, 293, 296. 

Interpolated by Onoixiacritus, 293. 

Doctrines of, 294, 295. 

Had received the rites of initiation 
in Egypt, 295, 

Analogous to the Egyptian Hermes, 
29G. 

Quoted by Plato, 296, 297. 

Poetry of, admitted by Plato in his 

republic, 297. 
What, thought of the name of Zeus, 

302-304. 

The first cause of decline in doctrine 

for the Greeks, 326, 327. 
School of, adopted by Pythagoras, 

370. 

Proof of tbe antiquity of the poetry 
of, from iEschylus, 415. 
Osiris. 

History of, described on the monu- 
ments, 261. 

Dissolute ceremonies in the sacri- 
fices to, 267. 

Judge of the dead, 268. 

History of, probably the subject of 
poems, 253, 254, 256. 

Was the same as Dionysus, 295. 



P. 

Paleolithic Age 

Facts of the, in Western Europe, 
71, 72. 

Unfairly called Quaternary, 72, 73. 
Fauna of the, 73. 
Climate during the, 78- 
The, very violent, 78, 79. 
Violence of the, proved by the ir- 
regular strata, 80, 81. 
Human remains of the, 87, sq. 
Objects of art in the, ibid. 
Pantheism. 
Origin of, 109. 

Origin of, in India, 151, 152. 

Advocated in the Sankhya philoso- 
phy, 154,«155. 

Origin of, in Egypt, 240, sq. 251, sq. 

Genesis of, in Egypt, 250-252, 

Of Orpheus in "Greece, 3 .6, 327, sq, 
passim. 

No inclination to, among the Jews, 
447,448. 
Patriarchal Society. 
Some examples of, 62, 63.- 
Other examples of, 68. 



The rulers in, 131. 
In Egypt, 262. 

Description of, in Greece, 316,317, sq, 
Adverse to war, 321. 
Simple manners of, in Greece, 323, 
325. 

In other places, 346, 347. 
Unity of religion in, 353. 
Universal at first, 503-512. 
Proved by " Ancient Law," 504-512. 
Consequences of, 507, 508. 
In Borne, 509-511. 
Pelasgians. 

Chief characteristics of the, 280, 281. 
Language of the, ibid. 
The, merging into the Hellenes, 281 
The, not idolaters at first, 281, 282. 
No, inscriptions remain, 284. 
Orpheus must have been a, 285. 
The, superior to the Hellenes in 

point of religion and morality, 

300, 301. 

The, analogous to the Hindoos, ibid. 

The, were Javanas in India, 301. 

The doctrine of the. analogous to 
that of Hindostan, ibid. 

The primitive conception of Jupiter 
essentially, 305. 

The, were not barbarous, 306, 307. 

The, must have passed into the Hel- 
lenes, 307, 308. 

Description of the houses of the, 
321-323. 

The, did not worship the Nature- 
Powers, 308, 309. 

The, Zeus above the Olympian, ibid. 

The, had a real priesthood, 310. 

Names of religious ideas, 310. 311. 

The, subsequently adored the Na- 
ture-Powers, 308, 327, 328. 

Interest of Plato for, antiquity, 380. 
Peloponnesus. 

Antipathies and divisions of Greeks 
in the, 431-433. 
Periods. 

Stone, bronze, iron, contradicted by 
facts, 64, 65. 

Simultaneity of the various, exist- 
ing in all ages, 66. 
Phaeton. 

Myth of, according to the Egyptian 
priests, 299. 
Philosophers. 

The, did not sufficiently oppose 
idolatry, 337. 

Opposition of, to sophists not suf- 
ficient to save Greece, 338. 



522 



INDEX. 



Philosophy. 

Greek, different from that of India, 
363. 

Rationalism in, ibid. 
Usual branches of, 363, 364. 
Two great questions of, in Greece, 
364. 

Those questions of, settled by the 
Vedas in Hindostan, ibid. 

Atheistic systems of, in Greece, 
364. 

Ethics in Greek, 365. 

What account religion made of, in 
Greece. 365. 

Satisfied with State religion in 
Greece, 366-368. 

Open atheism of Greek, 368. 

Traditional, in Greece, 369. 

Traditional, in Greece analogous to 
many doctrines of the Old Testa- 
ment, 386-392. 

Mosaic derivation of, in Greece ac- 
knowledged by Gladstone, 388- 
392. 
Phoenicia. 

Primitive monotheism in, 442, 443. 
Plato. 

Doctrine of, on the name of Zeus, 
301-304. 

Doctrines of, not all traditional, 372, 
373. 

Proved the unity of God from the 
sensible beautiful, 373. 

A traditionalist philosopher, 374. 

Doctrines of, in metaphysics derived 
from others, 374, 375. 

Doctrines of, chiefly derived from 
Pythagoras, 375, 376. 

Intercourse of, with the Pythago- 
reans, 377. 

Intercourse of, with Archytas, 379, 
380. 

Interest, took in Pelasgic antiquity, 
380. 

Expenses, incurred for obtaining an- 
cient information, 381. 

Derived his philosophy from " sa- 
cred accounts of old time," 382. 

Received thus doctrines full of Chris- 
tian feeling, 383-385. 

Forgiveness of injury taught by, 
384, 385. 
Poetry. 

Egyptian, characterized, 253, 254. 

Repudiated by Plato, 297. 

Sometimes encouraged by Plato, 
ibid. 



Poetry, Hindoo. 
Examples of, 141, 142. 
More like our own than that of 

Greece and Rome, 143. 
Antiquity of, 164. 
Age of the Mahabharata. 168. 
Age of i he Ramayana, 169. 
Character of the, of the Ramayana, 

169. 

Character of the, of the Mahabha- 
rata, 170. 
Poets, Greek. 

Inspired according to Plato, 394. 

On the doctrine of expiation, 

Why the doctrine of, on expiation 
was harsh. 403-407. 

Why, thought some sins inexpiable, 
404-410. 

Monotheism of, 413-418. 

See iEschylus and Homer. 
Poets, Latin. 

Derived many things from Greek 
poets, 418. 

Primitive traditions kept by, 419, 
420. 

Lucretius an exception among the 
420. 

The, announced their doctrine as 
ancient, 

The old traditions kept by, form an 
under-current of literature, 420- 
' 423. 

Polygamy in India. 

How, was understood, 123. 
Progress. 

Not continuous in history, Pref. x, 

and passim through the book. 
A gap in, in the paheolithic a^e, 74. 
Going backwards, 122, 128, 148, and 
passim. ■ 
Prometheus. 

Was a Pelasgian of the first migra- 
tion, 278. 

Supposed to have rescued the Hel- 
lenes from barbarism, 279, 280. 

The myth of, misunderstood by 
many, 394, 395. 

The myth of, understood of Adam, 
396, 397. 

The mvth of, understood of Christ, 

396-401. 
See iEschylus. 
Puranas 
Old, 172. 

Age of the existing, ibid. 
The, very inferior to the Vedas, 172, 
173. 



INDEX. 



523 



Purport of the, 173. 
Pythagoras. 

A traditional philosopher, 369. 
Had travelled, ibid. 
Had received the doctrine of others, 
370. 

Connected with Orphic traditions, 
ibid. 

The philosophy of, a protest against 

rationalism, ibid. 
Errors of, 371. 

Admits one God, yet conforms to 

the State religion, 371, 372. 
Decline in the school of, ibid. 



a. 

Quaternary Epoch. See Palaeo- 
lithic Age. 

R. 

Races. 

Diversity of, source of division, 40, 
48, 49. 

Origin of the diversity of, 47, 48, 104. 
Diversity of, influenced by climate, 
54, 55. 

Turanian, degraded by a curse, 89- 
91, 95, 96. 

Turanian, called Allophylian, 90. 

Uniformity of the Turanian, proved 
by linguistic, 90-92. 

Proved by ancient writers, 93. 

Priority of the Turanian, to the 
Aryan and Semitic, 92-94. 

Hamitic, identified with the Tura- 
nian, 92-95. 

Mongolian, identified with the Ha- 
mitic, 96. 

The Turanian, not savage, 97. 

High and low, co-existing every- 
where together, disprove the uni- 
versal existence of primitive bar- 
barism, 103, 104. 

Elevation of, impossible without ex-, 
terior help, 104, 105. 

Origin of Aryan, according to Strabo, 
111. 

See Turanians and Semites. 
Ramayana. See Poetry, Hindoo. 
Rationalism. 

In Greece, 363. 
Religion. 

Coincidence between the Hindoo 
and Egyptian, 241-244. 

Did the Egyptians receive their, 



from India or the reverse, 245- 
249. 

Individualism in the Hindoo, 176, 
177. 

Individualism in the Egyptian, 265. 

Esoteric, in Egypt, 265, sq. 

All exterior among idolatrous na- 
tions, 265, 266. 

Degeneracy of, in Hindostan. See 
Hindoo Religion. 

Degeneracy of, in Egypt. See Egyp- 
tians. 

Degeneracy of, in Greece. See 
Greece. 

Primitive. See the same previous 

articles, and Semites. 
Revelation. 

Primitive, 29-31. . 

Weakened by differences of race, 

48, 49. 

Deprived of a centre, 55, 56. 

The cause in Egypt of prosperity 

and civilization, 269, 270. 
Anterior to philosophy, 283, 284. 
Forming always an under-current 

in Greece and Italy, 362, sq, 420- 

423. 

In Turanian countries, 
Rjshis 

Who were the? 130, 131. 
Ritual. 

Considerations on the, of ancient 
and modern religions, 186-188. 
Ritual, Funereal. 

Description of the, of the Egyptians, 
268, 269. 

Immortality of the soul proved by 

the, of Egypt, 236. 
Quotations from, 236, 337. 
Decline of religion in Egypt proved 

by the, ibid. 
Rome. 

Was the first to think of establish- 
ing unity in her empire, 57, 354. 



S. 

Schcsni. 
Were measures of distance, 258. 
Differed in various districts in Egypt, 
258, 259. 
Sects in India. 

Sect of Vishnu in opposition to that 
of Siva in Hindostan, 168, 167. 
Semites. 

The, furnish sennty materials to 
primitive religious history, 436. 



524 



INDEX. 



Idolatry prevailed among tlie, very 

early, 437. 
The polytheism of the, races alike 

in many points, ibid. 
No clanship in, countries, except 

among- the Jews and Arabs, 438. 
Original! v all the, adored the same 

God, 444, 445. 
The idolatry of the, worse than that 

of other nations, 454, 455. 
The, religiously influenced by the 

Mosaic rites, 456, sq. 
The debasement of the, could not 

have existed from the beginning, 

458. 
Siva. 

First origin of idolatry in Hindo- 

stan, 166. j 
Opposed to Vishnu, 167. 
Epoch of the cult of, 168, sq. 
See Trimoui ti. 
Soma.. 

Was the sacred liquor of India, 120, 
121. 

The horse associated with, in Hin- 
doo sacrifices, 136. 

Consecrated also in the religion of 
Zoroaster, 185. 
State Religion. 

Origin of, in Greece, 365. 

A consequence of freedom of inquiry 
in Greece, 366, 367. 

Universal in Greece, ibid. 
Stone Period. 

Discussed and disproved, 64,65,66,.?5'. 

See Periods and Palaeolithic Age. 
Supernatural. 

The, denied in our a°;e, 477-479. 

The, proved by human aspirations, 
477, 478. 

The, proved by facts, 478, 479. 

A, agent necessary for the under- 
standing of human history, 4S0,sq. 

"What " struggle " does the, suppose, 
481, 482. ' 

The, of primitive times proved by 
that of Christianity, 482-486. 



T. 

Tantras. 

Object of the, 174, 175. 

Magic of the, ibid. 
Troth. See Hermetic Books. 
Traditions. 

Primitive dogmas contained in the 
original, 30. 



Facts transmitted by the, 31. 

Bites prescribed by the, 32. 

Universal, 33, 34, 111. 

Becoming wenk, 48. 49. 

Oral, replacing writing with- advan- 
tage, 100. 

Contained in history and monuments 
more reliable than natural history 
for understanding primitive man, 
106, 107. 

Rites of old religions transmitted 
by, 187. 

On a Redeemer, on expiation, on the 
law of suffering, etc., in Greek 
poets. See ^Eschylus. 

Yet the Greeks in general were de- 
prived of, 300. 

Primitive, kept by Latin poets, 418— 
420. 

Kept by Greek philosophers. See 
Plato, Pythagoras, and Philoso- 
phy. 

Kept in Greece and Italy lormed an 
under-current of an old literature, 
• 420-423. 

The under-current of old, underrated 
by modern critics, 421, 422. 
Transmigration. 

Was one of the first Hindoo aberra- 
tions, 147. 

Never mentioned in the Rig- Veda, 
147, 148. 

Was an exaggeration of truth, 149. 

Excesses of the belief in, 149. 

Belief in, anterior to that of absorp- 
tion in God, 150. 
Trimourti. 

Source of the subsequent idolatry 
in Hindostan, 132. 

Origin of the, 138, 165. 

The, flourished later than the sixth 
century before Christ, 168, 169. 
Trismegibtus. See Hermetic Books. 
Turanians. 

The, appear to have been at first 
barbarous, 458, 459. 

The, identified with the Hamites, 
460. 

Trilingual inscriptions of the, 460, 
461. 

Opposition of Zarathustra to the, 
462. 

The, were merely nomads, 462, 463. 
The, enjoyed patriarchal manners, 
ibid. 

The. belonged to the pastoral tribes, 
464. 



INDEX. 



525 



The religion of the, can be known 
from Chinese annals, 46G. 

The religion of the, as known from 
the Chinese books, 466-472. 

Philosophy of the, analogous to Hin- 
doo philosophy, 473. 

The, antiquities scarcely yet studied, 
473-475. 

The proper way to study antiqui- 
ties, ibid. 

See Palseolithic Period and Chinese. 
IT. 

Universal Soul. 
The doctrine of the, the cause of 

pantheism in India and Egypt,260. 
Upanishads. 
The, a part of the Vedas, 127. 
The, not more recent than the other 

parts of the Vedas, 127. 
Distinction between the old and 

new, 129. 
No discrimination to be made be 

tween the, and the other parts of 

the Vedas, 130. 
The best, not free from error, 146, 

149. 

Extracts from the, ibid, passim. 
V. 

Vedas. 

First study of the, 125. ' 
Synoptic view of the, 127. 
Authors of the, 130. 
The, supposed to be revealed, 130. 
The, written before idolatry, 132. 
Mixture of truth and error in the, 
152. 

Progress of error in the, 153. 
Vedanta. 

Philosophy. See Hindoo Philoso- 
phy- 
Villages. 

Primitive, in India, 116-118. 
Vishnu. See Sects in India. 
Vistacpa. 

King of the country of Zarathustra, 
179. 

W. 

Woman. 

State of, in primitive India, 120, 
121, sq. 



Writing. 

Not absolutely necessary for civili- 
zation, 100, 103. 

Many nations of the highest antiqui- 
ty acquainted with, i00, 102. 

Not so necessary to ancient nations 
as to us, 103. 

Among the Egyptians, 207, 208. 

The demotic, more recent, 208. 

Primitively, was always in verse,314. 



y. 

Tacna. 

The, a part of the Zends containing 
the Gathas, 185. 



Z. 

Zarathustra. 

Real age of, 179, 180. 
The doctrine of, a reform, 180-186. 
The doctrine of, was not the source 
of Judaism, Christianity, nor of 
Mohammedanism, 182. 
The doctrine of, not so easily cor- 
rupted as that ot the Vedas, 183. 
The doctrine of, called Mazdeisni. 

See Mazdeism. 
Never raised to godship, 190. 
Zarvanian Doctrine. 
Character of the, 198, 199. 
Origin of the, 199. 
Zends. 

Zarathustra author of the oldest 

part of the, 178. 
The, not Persian books, 178, 179. 
The, at first considered as spurious 

books, 180. 
The style of the, Vedic, 180, 181. 
Monotheism taught in the, 181-185. 
The, have contributed nothing to 

Judaism or Christianity, 198. 
Zeus. 

Signification of the name of, 301. 
Plato derived the signification of 

the name of, from Orpheus, 302- 

304. 

No essential difference between the 
original Greek, and the Roman 
Jupiter, 304, 305. 



t 




By the ^ame ^Author. 



The Irish Race, 

IN THE 

PAST AND THE PRESENT. 

BY 

Rev. AUG. J. THEBAUD, S. J. 
One Volume 8vo, Cloth Extra, - $3.50. 

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 

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Avhat is really a noble work, and one of the highest tributes ever paid to 
the viitues and the heroism of the Irish race. The key-note of the whole 
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2 



illumines it with such a brilliancy of thought, that he may be fairly con- 
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we, who are Irish, feel a kind of regret that Ireland's most triumphant 
justification is not the work of an Irishman. But the regret is scarcely 
reasonable. In loyalty to the Church, and in sacrifice for the Church's 
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At last something like justice has been done to the Irish character by a 
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history, and introduced order into what has seemed to us hitherto a 
chaotic mass of dry details, by setting forth clearly and distinctly the 
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son's Review. 

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great ingenuity, thorough research, and close thought The primitive 

civilization of the race, its early reception of Christianity, its steadfast 
adherence to Catholicity, its stubborn and successful resistance to the in- 
solent power of England, are carefully reviewed and greatly glorified. 
The author is proud of the fact that the Irish absorbed and assimilated 
every race which invaded the soil except the Scotch, who established them- 
selves iu the North of Ireland, and whilst he is not blind to the defects in 
the Irish character, and the weakness of the eailier clan system, he em- 
phasises the virtues of the race in warm terms. The Irish were not a 
natiou until they were made such by their devotion to Catholicism. The 
attempts of the English government to drive the Church from the soil, 
knit the families together and healed the intestine feuds of the beautiful 
island. 



"The chapter on 'Moral Force' is interesting, as showing the sole 
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the moral force of public sentiment alone, to redress the grievances ot 
Ireland. 

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ing relief the Christian virtues of fortitude, rjatience, and resignation ; 
challenging our admiration of its noble qualities, and awakening our 
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evinces ripe scholarship. Its scope is more enlarged than a mere history. 
.... The main facts which form the basis of discussion may be briefly 
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teristics have been preserved without considerable change, by virtue of 
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aries from Rome, down to the time of the wars with England. It retised 
to adopt mediaeval feudalism. The philosophies of Greece and Rome 
were kept from the schools of the nation, to the peace and great advan- 
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